


Reflektor

by ReyloTrashCompactor (NextToSomething)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Dark, Drama, F/M, Knights of Ren - Freeform, Rating May Change, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Tags May Change, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:19:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6157921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NextToSomething/pseuds/ReyloTrashCompactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren isn’t fool enough to believe that her capture was a happy accident. He didn’t believe it was good fortune, and he believed least of all that it had anything to do with the reconnaissance skills of Hux’s half-wit stormtroopers. If they have The Girl Called Rey in custody, it is because she meant for it to happen. It was because she had a plan and this was a step in executing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What Must Be Done

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, friends! I’m trying this multi-chapter, slow burn thing. This…is going to be interesting. And dark-ish. We’re going to have fun! I hope you enjoy; please let me know what you think! 
> 
> Title is taken from the [Arcade Fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrEl6oW6u-I) song of the same title.
> 
> Big thank you, as always, to [SouthSideStory](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory) for being my bestie in all things writing. Check her out, friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been tweaked and edited, the new version posted as of November 2nd (11/02/2016). The edits are not extreme and don't necessarily require a second read if you read it previously. I'm just leaning a little more heavily on some themes.

Kylo Ren wasn’t fool enough to believe that her capture was a happy accident. He didn’t believe it was good fortune, and he believed least of all that it had anything to do with the reconnaissance skills of Hux’s half-wit stormtroopers. If they had The Girl Called Rey in custody, it was because she meant for it to happen. It was because she had a plan and this was a step towards executing it.

He could feel rather than see the leering smirks on the stormtroopers’ faces when he had ordered she be taken to his personal chambers for questioning, but he cared little about that. Of course they were so base as to think his keeping her in his rooms had anything to do with some physical want. The truth, of course, is that he had no mind to let her out of his sight this time. He’d barely glanced in the other direction before those idiot bucketheads had armed and released her when he’d last had her.

Not this time.

He stopped in front of the great door that would lead him to Snoke. He was anxious to see the girl with his own two eyes, but this summons had come almost the instant he received news of her capture. Kylo thought he knew what to expect from his master, and he steeled himself for it. He held up a hand and swiped the door open.

The heat of Snoke’s Great Room was always more oppressive than Kylo Ren anticipated. The room looked cold enough, but heat licked up the insides of his mask the instant he crossed the threshold. Mustafar was an unforgiving and harsh planet, and the First Order base managed to shield its inhabitants from the noxious ashen air and broiling heat. But Snoke seemed to enjoy the heat, keeping this room so one could scarcely breathe.

A fine sweat beaded on Kylo’s forehead and trickled annoyingly into his eyes which he couldn’t reach while masked. He couldn’t help but think that this discomfort was precisely the point of the stifling temperature. 

“I understand that the girl has been captured.”

The droning voice carried through the dry air like billowing smoke from a fire. Kylo Ren approached the dais on which his master sat, following that commanding sound. The Supreme Leader was not nearly as massive in stature as his hologram on Starkiller would have one believe, but in the flesh, his presence was magnified tenfold. The absolute power that emanated from him, shriveled husk of a creature that he was, was staggering. It humbled Kylo every time he was near enough to feel it, to recognize that undiluted Darkness that rippled from his master in intoxicating waves. 

It ignited a robust surge of outright jealousy in him, to sense the confidence in which his master wielded this power. How doubtlessly Snoke inhabited the Dark Side.

“Yes, Supreme Leader. She is being held in my quarters now.”

Kylo was close enough to see the slight shift in the Supreme Leader’s craggy expression, and he suddenly felt like he had said the wrong thing.

“Your quarters?” Snoke intoned. “An interesting choice for you, Kylo Ren.”

Kylo felt the sweat bead more heavily on his brow at his master’s implication.

“I would expect such crudeness from General Hux, but you, I thought…” His master’s great voice trailed off, though not without intent. The Supreme Leader did not abandon his words lightly, and neither did he speak without careful thought behind each syllable. 

“Forgive me, master. I have the girl sequestered there out of simple necessity. I doubt that Hux’s men’s are capable of securing a prisoner as powerful as her. You remember what happened last time she--”

There was a searing, piercing pain that bloomed behind the bridge of his nose, cutting Kylo’s words short.

“I do not need reminding of her previous escape.” Snoke’s words were cool though biting. A phantom finger seemed to caress the scar that cleaved Kylo’s face beneath his mask. “And neither do you.”

“Forgive me,” Kylo said again before falling silent. He stared hard at the stone floor.

“You know what must be done with the girl,” Snoke continued after a heavy moment. “You know, and yet you hesitate.” A sound that might be a laugh from a creature that had a sense of humor rattled from Snoke. “You want me to tell you to do it, you weak thing.”

Shame flared over Kylo’s scalp. Every encouragement he earned from Snoke had been seasoned with humbling derision, from the first moment of his surrender to the Supreme Leader. But his master's ridicule had grown far worse since the destruction of Starkiller. Thanks to Han Solo and the blasted Resistance, Kylo could expect abject degradation every time he was called before Snoke. He deserved no better than such scathing reproach, but it hurt all the same.

“The girl must die,” Kylo said, his voice too loud through his mask’s modulator . “I will see to her execution personally.”

A humming sound of perverse pleasure wafted from where Snoke sat and Kylo dared to raise his gaze from the floor.

“Very good. You will extract what you can from her, of course. She is bound to be useful for some information. But do not waste your energy on her, Kylo Ren. I will not risk your compassion for her twisting the path on which I have set you. She will not best you again.”

Kylo regretted looking up to meet Snoke’s gaze to see the ridicule he found there.

* * *

The cool air of the antechamber sent shivers through him as it dried the sweat covering his skin. He wavered before opening the door to his quarters, but he wasn’t entirely certain as to why. Snoke’s insouciance over the girl’s fate was nothing Kylo hadn’t experienced before. Would that _he_ could always be so blasé about the deaths of others. And the Supreme Leader’s mockery of Kylo’s past weakness was not unexpected or unearned.

But something was keeping him from opening the door to the room that held the scavenger. Perhaps it was the anticlimactic end to his year-long pursuit of her--she was captured in an unrelated mission off-world and would likely fall to his lightsaber once he’d gleaned what information he could from her. Such was a paltry way to end what had, in the beginning, seemed to be a worthy divertissement, but the time for naive offers of tutelage had passed. That opportunity collapsed in the snow of a dying world. It would seem the girl was not meant for such greatness as he had imagined.

He swiped the door open with a decided air of indifference.

Once he could see the sitting room of his quarters, a barrage of startling images assaulted him in rapid succession. The room was a wreck, for one, with items from the shelves scattered and broken along the floor. The next was that the girl appeared to be strung up from the ceiling instead of bound to an interrogation chair as expected. This was probably partially how the room had become so thoroughly ransacked: she was swinging from her chains and kicking wildly at any solid surface her unbound feet encountered. The last realization that occurred to him before he stilled her flailing body with a surge of the Force was that she was very nearly nude.

Her face was livid and her breaths were coming in ragged pants. Her eyes focused on him in pure ire as he took in the scene with a keener eye. 

She had been bound by the wrists to a long chain suspended from his ceiling. The dirty footprint smudges on the brushed durasteel suggested that she had managed to invert herself once free of supervision and had tried to yank the chain from the ceiling. Failing that, she had apparently taken to trying to either kick down something to use to free or defend herself with from his shelves, or had dissolved into panicked thrashing at her realization of her captivity. 

Or she wanted to piss Kylo Ren off supremely.

She was still now, her back bowed and her body not quite limp at the end of her chain from his Forcing her still. She was stretched to her full extent, her toes only just curling on the floor.

He eased his hold on her when he noticed the crumpled pile of rags now scattered along the floor. She hadn’t been captured in her chest band and underwear.

She had been stripped.

He turned his back on her, a flush that had nothing to do with want flaming up his neck to ring in his ears. The wide expanses of her naked skin burned into his thoughts though he willed them away. Utter fury was close on these images’ heels. 

Without thinking, he reached to the release mechanism of his mask and pulled it from his head. The rush of cool air to his damp scalp centered him for the barest of moments so he might be able to speak.

“I will release you, and you will remain calm.” 

She didn’t answer him, so he turned back to face her. 

The girl’s face was set in defiance and he forced himself to notice only the hate and purest anger that burned in those eyes. He spoke again.

“I will release you, and you will remain calm.” 

He did not try to manipulate her with some sort of mind trick. He wanted nothing to do with her mind at the moment, and would spare no energy for its handling. If she would not listen to him, he knew he could physically overpower her easily enough.

Kylo eased his grasp on her until her body hung more freely from the chain, and he waited until her feet were securely under her before waving the manacles at her wrists free. 

She fell lightly to the flats of her feet and raised her hands as if ready to spar. She looked wild in nothing but her underthings, filthy and bloody from her struggles since being captured. Harder since he had last seen her. He held her gaze for another long moment before pulling the heavy black cloak from his shoulders.

She tensed, her hands flexing a fraction and her weight shifting to the balls of her feet.

He threw the cloak to her.

“Cover yourself.”

She fumbled with the cloak in her arms, her steely look morphing to startled confusion. 

“The stormtroopers,” he demanded as she struggled with the mass of black fabric in her hands. “Did they strip you down like this?”

Her mouth was still a tight line as she slowly started to wrap the cloak about her, her look that of utter distrust.

“Answer me, girl.”

This roused her and that stiffness returned to her posture as she spoke for the the first time. “They did.”

He nodded curtly, needing little confirmation beyond this. He remembered the shift in the demeanor of two stormtroopers in particular, and he knew without a doubt that they were responsible for this disgusting scene in his sitting room.

“Did they take any other liberties?”

She was wrapped in the cloak fully now, the excess fabric pooling on the floor at her feet. The white tips of her fingers peeked out the front of it as she clutched it closed around her. Her brows knitted at his question.

He gestured vaguely at her body, and her confused expression uncoiled.

“No.”

He nodded again. “The better for them. They will die a quick death for this; anything further would require a more lengthy punishment.”

Her mouth dropped open and her confused expression returned. “You’re going to kill them?”

He took a moment to recognize how odd this whole affair had been thus far, how wholly different he thought his next meeting with the girl would be. “Well, not me personally, no. Such things are beneath my rank. But they will die.”

Her head shook in bewilderment--a small but powerful gesture.

“You’d have me spare them? The idiots who strung you up like a butcher strings up a carcass to bleed?”

“I--I…” Her head continued to shake, and her grip on the robe loosened to reveal one tanned shoulder. This exposure of her skin jolted him and he stood straighter.

“They are simple creatures. They are not worth your...compassion.”

She fell still again, her eyes downcast. He took notice of the bruises blooming beneath the skin of her cheek then, the raw scrapes on her neck from being stripped against her will. Her hair was matted with blood and fell in haggard clumps from her mostly fallen buns.

Without much thought, he said, “You’re filthy.”

Her eyes shot up at him again, angry and hard. He was surprised at how quickly she fell to anger, had been surprised by this before. Such violent shifts in mood weren’t ideal for a Jedi in training; this he knew personally.

“The ‘fresher is through there,” he motioned. “You should clean yourself up.” He considered her for a moment, then the trashed room. His few belongings scattered along the floor--odd bits of mechanical pieces, little things he had built to steady his mind when he felt most torn, odd artifacts he had picked up from planets long destroyed. Many were broken or streaked with her blood, but he found that he didn’t really care. “Take as long as you like,” he continued when he brought his gaze back to hers. “What comes next won’t be enjoyable.”

She tugged the cloak closer around her slight body and she backed a step away from him.

“I'm executing the soldiers who disgraced you. If that doesn't tell you how I feel about taking advantage of women, maybe you're a simple creature too.” He speared a hand through his hair, and watched as she took great notice of this gesture. “I have no desire to fuck you,” he finished slowly, deliberately.

He pointed again at the door to the ‘fresher. “Go. Stop bleeding on my floor.”

She looked at him for a moment longer, and he thought again how queer this all was. Wondered at his insistence that she wash herself, and take her time doing so, before he extracted the information she undoubtedly carried with her. The door clicked quietly shut behind her as she scurried away to the ‘fresher and he saw that she left bloody footprints in her wake.

He looked again at the mess she had made of his quarters. A small smile tugged at his lips, slow and stiff from disuse, and he scrubbed his hand over his mouth in frustration. He stalked to the panel at the far wall to summon a service droid to take care of this mess while the girl was indisposed. He looked down, nudging a scrap of fabric that used to be her clothes with the toe of his boot, and thought of interrogating her in nothing but his cloak. Her skin was fascinating to him: brown and mottled with freckles in some places, irreparably damaged by exposure to the sun. Stark white in other places, the still fresh skin beneath her clothes. He’d tried, he’d tried so hard not to notice, but he had. He wondered if the tanned skin differed in texture, so long weathered by the elements, than the stretches of white… His chest was tight and he felt the stirrings of curiosity, and something much more base and raw, begin to take hold of him. 

He felt suddenly sick with himself, and shook the thought from his head as sent an order through for a change of clothes for her as well.

Kylo glanced toward the door to the ‘fresher. She was being oddly quiet. Though he had told her to take as long as she wanted, he hadn’t meant for her to simply hide away in there for the rest of the night. Or, more foolishly, try to escape.

He strode purposefully to the door but stopped himself just before swiping it open.

She had had enough of that kind of humiliation for one day. 

He rapped a leather-clad knuckle sharply against the door and waited. When he didn’t hear anything, he knocked again.

There was another long moment of silence in which Kylo considered just opening the door, her privacy be damned, when a small voice answered from the other side: “Come in.”

There was a feeling of relief that she hadn’t done anything stupid while alone in the ‘fresher that pulsed through him, followed quickly by frustration at his own stupidity for letting that be a possibility. He wanted her in his chambers so he could keep an eye on her, and the first thing he had done was send her to a room alone. There were no malleable stormtroopers or spare weaponry in his ‘fresher, but she was too wily to underestimate nonetheless.

He opened the door and saw her standing, still wrapped in his cloak, in the middle of the small room. A quick look around revealed that she hadn’t attempted anything obvious in the way of escape, but he also saw that her underthings were neatly folded and stacked on the edge of the sink. Heat pricked the tips of his ears and he looked back to the girl.

“Is there a problem?”

She tipped up her chin. She worked so hard to look strong, to hold tight to that damnable defiance, even when standing in his ‘fresher with nothing protecting her but his own robe. Something about this, about all of this, tugged again at the corners of his mouth, willing a smile for which he had no use. It was very irritating.

“I don’t know how to turn it on,” she said, her chin still lifted. As if this wasn't a laughable indignity. She was too uncivilized to understand the controls of a shower, a situation that would cow any normal person, but this girl was too stubborn to let her own ignorance embarrass her.

“The shower? The controls are---”

“No,” she cut in. She fumbled under his cloak for a moment, as if trying to extract a hand without revealing any other parts of her body. She finally settled for letting the cloak drop down over a shoulder again and pulled out a long, finely muscled arm. “The…” she gestured. “The bath.”

Kylo looked to the large, deep, square bathtub at which her steady finger was pointing, and realization dawned. “You want to take a bath?”

Her mouth tightened and Kylo noticed that the skin around the cuts and bruises on her face had grown a shade more livid and red. “I’ve never had one before.” Her voice was strong, devoid of shame.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve never had a bath?”

The redness of her face intensified as she blew out a frustrated huff of air. “I’ve had a bath before! Just not...a hot one. In a proper tub.” She was quiet for a moment more, and when she spoke again, that impatient spike to her words was dulled again. “I think I am going to die soon; I think that you are going to kill me, so I want to have a hot bath before I do.”

Kylo felt her words like a blaster hit, sharp in his gut. His inclinations to smile at her pride and defiance wiped from him as he considered her cold acceptance of her own death. While not entirely glad to see the girl again, he was intrigued by her presence and not a little anxious to learn more about the last year of her life. Her statement also gave him momentary pause, as he had been very sure that she was not here on the First Order base by accident. She straightened her shoulders and pulled her naked arm back into the cloak, and the doubt vanished. 

Anyone who could face him in so pitiful a state as this and still find the wherewithal to stare him boldly in the face, to announce their intention of a small comfort before dying, was not the sort to be captured so easily. 

He didn’t believe it, and he was going to find out why.

Not taking his eyes from her, he used his teeth to tug his glove from his right hand. She did lower her gaze then, only for a moment, before looking up again, her mouth set in a tighter line than before. 

“The taps are controlled by this sensor,” he said as he bent and tapped two fingers on an, admittedly discreet, black pad along the edge of the tub. Water poured from the elongated faucet in a small waterfall. “You adjust the temperature like this.”

He dragged his fingers across the pad and steam immediately rose from the rush of water. 

“I assume you can work out the stopper at the bottom,” he added.

“I’ll manage,” she bit out, her annoyance clipping her voice once again.

Straightening back to his full height, he began to tug his glove back on again. “I’m going to leave the door cracked so I can hear if you have further--difficulties.”

“You’re too kind,” she replied in that same sarcastic tone that had listed the specs of a BB unit the first time she was his...guest. His scalp itched at the recollection, and he left her to her bath. Once the door was mostly closed and he had turned his back on the room, he heard the faint disturbance of water as she climbed into the bath.

He suddenly wanted to be nowhere near this girl and the small pleasures she took in her last moments.

The service droid had arrived while he was attending to her and Kylo was pleased to see that the room was neat again, if lacking in items on the shelves. He took a seat farthest from the door to the ‘fresher and tried to not hear the small splashing noises coming from the crack in the door.

This was not how he imagined their next meeting, he thought again. The word _compassion_ flitted across his mind once more, and he inwardly cringed to think what Snoke would have to say of his treatment of the prisoner thus far. Would his master have approved if he left her strung to his ceiling, nearly naked and struggling for escape?

Probably more than he would of Kylo offering her his own clothes for cover and a hot bath.

But forcing the girl into anything had proven a disastrous tactic in the past, he reasoned. It was not out of compassion that he was civil to her. It was an effort to get what he needed from her in the least destructive way possible. His hand drifted to the scar on his face, the hard welt of skin roping over the line of his jaw, noticeable even through his leather gloves.

A particularly loud splash sounded from the ‘fresher followed by a warbling, humming refrain from a song Kylo had never heard before. He scrubbed his hands over his face before slapping them down onto the arms of his chair. Singing in the bath was too much. 

He stalked over to the door and the noises inside stopped abruptly. He opened his mouth to tell her to stop humming, to hurry things along. But her soft song started again and he found that he couldn’t voice the command. He went instead to the panel on the wall and typed in an order for food for the girl. His finger hesitated on the choice of basic rations, bland proteins and cold energy cubes. Her song changed to something higher and lilting, and he chose instead a hot meal that he most favored.

Once the order had been sent through and confirmed, he smashed the screen with a punishing blow of his fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment to tell me what you thought! I appreciate any and all feedback; it only helps me to improve as a writer.


	2. Worthy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience in waiting for this update. I hope the wait was worth it! Please let meknow what you think in the comments below. :)
> 
> Thanks again to **SouthSideStory** for her mad beta skills.
> 
> **Please note:** This chapter has been tweaked and edited, the new version posted as of November 2nd (11/02/2016). The edits are not extreme and don't necessarily require a second read if you read it previously. I'm just leaning a little more heavily on some themes.

Kylo was idly picking fine glass splinters out of the thin leather of his gloves and the thinner skin of his knuckles when the door pinged for the service droid. He took the hot meal from it and wondered what to do with the neat pile of clothing that had been brought for the girl. He should just walk into the ‘fresher and place the clothes on the worktop. What use was privacy to a prisoner soon to die?

But he couldn’t make himself slide the cracked door open any further. Hearing her sing and softly splash in the bath seemed absurdly intimate already, sent embarrassed heat to the tips of his ears, but to see her fully, so painfully thin and sinewed, so vulnerable--that was something he was certain that he didn’t want.

He ground his bleeding knuckles against the wall, willing that pain to surface afresh. He _should_ want to see her vulnerable. He should have no qualms over her discomfort, this girl who, with the training he had so foolishly offered, could have stepped into her lightsaber strike and cleaved his head from his shoulders. Instead, he’s marked with his own foolishness, and he should want to make her suffer for it.

But he laid the clothes neatly outside the door, instead. “There’s a change of clothes here,” he said. “And food, though that’s getting cold.”

Her soft humming ceased.

“I thought you said I could take as long as I liked.” 

His mouth pinched over that damnable inclination to smile at her quiet defiance. “I did. But runyip is awful cold.”

There was another long beat of silence. “All right.”

He backed quickly away from the door and sat himself again in the far chair. His eyes shot to the ceiling when he saw a thin, damp arm reach through the crack of the door to grab the clothes, but this only brought his attention back to the footprint smudges left there from the girl’s earlier struggle. Kylo squeezed his eyes shut with a groan.

He’d gone about this all wrong. He’d been weak, again. He should have left her strung to his ceiling, pulled the information she undoubtedly possessed from her mind, and been done with it. Killed her while she was chained. Left the mess for the service droid. 

There was a great many things that Kylo Ren should have done, and he knew, as the girl stepped out into his sitting room with wet, loose hair, wearing a too-large tunic and too-long pants, that it was far too late to try to do them now. 

“Food is on the table,” he said in what he hoped was a bored tone. 

She nodded and padded silently over to the table. She wasn't given any socks, and something about the sight of her pale, slender bare feet propelled him from his chair. He paced the length of the sitting room, pinching his knuckles’ ragged skin in punishing twists. 

He noticed in his quick glances at her that the girl ate carefully, slowly. Her bites were too large and he could tell that she must be practically starved, but still she ate with a control that he was angry to admire. He seated himself heavily opposite her, his unlit saber gripped in his hand. He slammed this hand onto the table and the weapon clanked noisily against her tray. 

“Is this the part where you ask me about the droid?” she asked once she swallowed. 

“It's been a year, scavenger. We know what that droid could have told us.” Her own silence in that interrogation room was implied in the tightness of his words. “Ahch-To has been under surveillance for months. Luke Skywalker is nowhere on its surface.”

The girl continued to eat, cutting her food into smaller and smaller pieces before bringing the bites to her mouth. She seemed aware that the meal couldn't last forever and was making an apparent effort to elongate it as much as possible. Perhaps she wasn't entirely fearless, after all. 

“But I have a feeling you already knew that.”

She didn't look up, seeming completely engrossed in trying to gather the remaining gravy on the plate onto her spoon. 

He reached across the table and lifted the edge of the plate, pooling the gravy at its edge. She hesitated before scooping up this last bite, scraping the spoon gratingly across the plate. 

“Would you like another?” 

She did look up at this and Kylo could see her embarrassment painting its truth across her cheeks. 

He stood, tucking his saber into his belt, and walked to the wall panel. He cursed when he remembered that he'd ruined it with his previous outburst and hissed in pain as he peeled off his gloves, the action tearing his knuckles further. The girl had somehow managed to not destroy his holopad in her earlier flailing and he tapped around on the screen to send through the order for another meal. 

“Why were you on Manda?” he asked once he set the holopad back on the shelf. 

She didn't answer, so he pulled out the hilt of his weapon again. Laid it on the table between them before sitting down. 

“Why were you at the Archives?” he tried again.

She touched a finger to the plate, picking up a crumb, and sucked the finger into her mouth. No use trying to disguise that hunger now. “Why does anyone go to the Archives? I wanted to learn.”

Kylo scoffed. “I thought you had a teacher.” 

The girl looked boldly across at him and he took in the sight. She did not look well kept by his once-master. She looked like she had when Kylo had first met her. A scavenger, half-starved and reckless. Impossibly older than the weathering of only a year. He didn’t know if her hair was longer; he’d only ever seen it pulled back before. But he imagined that it was now that he saw it in damp tendrils around her face, that she had not lived in such a way that allowed for such luxuries as haircuts and regular meals. 

“Where is Luke Skywalker?” he asked, belatedly realizing that this should have been his first question.

She didn’t look away as she said, “I don’t know.”

He raised his eyebrows at that, though he wasn’t sure if he was actually surprised. “You don’t?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“And why not? We gathered intelligence that you were with him shortly after the destruction of Starkiller.” 

“I was. I trained with him on...Ahch-To.” Her voice was halting, as if afraid to give something away. As if saying this planet’s name out loud were a dangerous thing, even though Kylo had already confirmed that he knew it. As if she were being careful with her words. She could not be so careful with her mind, and Kylo lifted his hand from the table, preparing to nudge his way inside.

“I ran away,” the girl said suddenly, stopping Kylo before he could send his energy toward her.

He stared at her for a long moment, looking away only when the door pinged. He retrieved the meal from the droid and considered holding this comfort hostage from her until she was more free with her answers, until she spoke in more than clipped, perfunctory sentences. 

“Why did you run away, scavenger?” He asked as he approached the table.

She didn’t eye the meal like its withholding would break her, but rather looked smoothly at him in a way that almost made him wish that he hadn’t shed his mask upon entering the room.

“Why did _you_?”

That smile he had been biting back all evening curled slowly from one side of his mouth to the other. He watched as the effect he expected settled over her and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat before finally looking down. He took away the empty tray from beneath her downcast eyes and placed the refreshed one in its place.

“You are clever. I’ve known that for a while. Though I’d wager that your reasons for running from Luke Skywalker differ quite a bit from my own.”

Something like “You’d be surprised,” mumbled from her before she began to tuck into the hot plate of food, eating with a touch less care than before. He watched her, feeling a bit hungry himself, but he reasoned that though his soft tactics had thus far proven somewhat effective, he doubted that sharing a meal with her would bolster her feeling of cooperation in the face of danger. He instead settled into a short meditation to refocus himself, to draw his thoughts from hunger and the warmth kindled in him by her quiet noises of hurriedly chewing and swallowing. Her eyes shot up at the shift of energy about him and he allowed another small grin. Something about this gesture disarmed her, and he made note that smiling at her might be a useful tactic in the future.

Revulsion clutched in his stomach as he realized that any future with this girl was not to last beyond the next few hours, and his smile fell away.

“I don’t believe you, you know,” Kylo stated as she finished her second plate. She tilted the plate up as he had earlier to catch the remains of gravy. “I don’t think that you ran away. I don’t believe that you don’t know the whereabouts of Skywalker, and I seriously doubt that you are anything like me.”

She sighed and pushed the cleaned tray a few inches away.

“Look for yourself, then, if you don’t believe me.”

This surprised him. She knew what it was like to have someone in her mind, knew what that violation felt like. And last time...he had not been kind. He had been so taken by the blinding brightness of her mind, by the quivering wealth of power she held untapped there, that he had looked at things he shouldn’t have, things that he didn’t need to. Things that had no bearing on finding the droid or Luke Skywalker. He had looked at her life, shriveled thing that it was, and he had goaded her with it until she felt spurred to fight back. All because he felt compelled to look, and so he did. That was a particular flavor of powerlessness, to be stripped of the last privacy available to any one person, and Kylo knew its taste all too well.

To freely offer him access raised his suspicions considerably.

“Very well.” 

He pushed.

She wasn’t so vibrant this time, her mind was not so blinding and damn near painful to navigate, to transgress. It was cluttered and fractured, dim and withered. _What had happened to her?_ He saw her capture on Manda, saw the supposed reason for her apprehension: her own pitiful resignation. A surrender that came entirely too soon. He saw her flight from Ahch-To, and felt her bitter resentment that tanged like blood at the back of his tongue.

He followed that image further and found an unwilling teacher, hard and cold. Skywalker was a changed man from the idealistic uncle Kylo had known. The girl had to pull wisdom from him in inches, suffer at his silence, and go to sleep at night under the weight of dozens of unanswered questions.

It made sense, why she left, why she sought the Archives of Baobab. It made sense, and so he did not trust it.

He took a hard turn that drew a gasp from the girl. He could both see her and not see her sitting across the table from him, her hands gripping the sides of the table and her eyes unfocused. The reality of her was like a faint watermark over the images he filed through, looking for something she was trying to hide. 

He saw a young girl crouched in the oxidized corpse of an AT-AT, bright red blood on her fingertips. Her hands were shaking and Kylo could see the source of the blood, and why this memory was so tender. It flooded her bed from between her legs, and he could feel her absolute terror in the face of a painful death as wrenching cramps seized her belly, black blood and clots smeared on her inner thighs. He felt her hunger as she saved her portions for days to go see the medicine woman in the faded tent at the outpost. He experienced the tight grip of shame as the woman explained the blood, the pain, and handed the portions back to the girl, along with lengths of thick cotton for her to use as sanitary protection against her courses.

He was aware that the girl across from him was crying as he watched this younger version of herself burn her thin pallet in the sand outside of her makeshift home, ruinous, gored stains and the stench of old blood making it impossible to keep. She pushed him away from this memory as he saw the beginnings of weeks spent on the hard floor until she was able to salvage another thin mattress from another picked-over starship.

This reminder of his strength over hers fresh and hard, he went again to her memories of Ahch-To, looked for what else there was to see. He saw her anger, outbursts not unlike his own. On her face was terror and doubt as she begged Skywalker for assurance that she wasn’t fated for the Dark, that he could teach her to pull away from this.

But Skywalker had no confidence in troubled students anymore. And he gave her no peace.

Pain began to bloom at the bridge of his nose as he dug deeper, intent on shuffling through every moment of her past year, and he found more and more the deeper he looked. The girl was weakening, and she wasn’t able to keep much from him. She was so ashamed of her temper, of her impatience. She missed her friends terribly, and resented them somewhat, however ridiculous the emotion, for not being there with her. She felt weak at having grown used to companionship, and angry that Luke would not give it to her. She lamented the loss of her former self, who could meticulously dig through a thrice scavenged wreck and find enough to feed herself for the next week. Who was fine enough alone with only the company of the stars and a battered helmet to keep her sane.

_Where had that self-sufficient girl gone? What had taken that steadfastness from her?_ she often wondered.

Faces Kylo recognized flashed past his mind’s eye and he experienced her confusion at both loving these people--Finn, General Organa, Poe Dameron--and hating them in the same breath for ruining who she knew herself to be.

All this, and yet there was nothing more than the ragged memories of a broken girl to find. Nothing that would lead him to Skywalker or to anyone of value within the Resistance. Nothing of any real worth.

He withdrew.

It was done, then.

The girl flinched as he took away her tray and set it aside with the other. She was trying to be quiet in her crying, but the wet sound of her breaths was unmistakable. He wanted the girl from before back, as well. It gnawed at him to see to what shambles her mind had been reduced, to see that this bravery she still projected was not much more than a facade. 

Her weeping slowed as he took his seat across from her again and he sat in silence waiting for her to collect herself. When she finally looked up, her eyes were red but steady and her mouth was set against the tremors that still threatened there.

“Can you tell me nothing else about the Resistance or the current location of Luke Skywalker?” His voice sounded dead, and indeed, he felt pretty damn lifeless. He was aware that he was inhabiting the last moments of this girl’s life and he couldn’t banish the thought of what he had just pulled from her. What was now, inevitably, sitting right at the surface of her mind. The sadness she was made to relive in the last hour of her life. “Nothing at all?”

She shook her head, and he felt nearly certain that this was her pitiful truth. Maybe he had considered her capture a part of a larger plan before, but now his doubt clouded that. He had scraped the very bottom of her mind, drawn every ounce of intelligence she could have possessed---which was fair little. It wasn’t possible that the wet faced girl now curling in on herself had been able to keep anything from him, and he felt sore disappointment in overestimating her capability for machinations and intrigue.

“You realize your life is worth very little right now.” 

This seemed to strike her as an almost physical blow, and it took Kylo a moment to realize why. He saw the disappointed face of Luke Skywalker, heard the decayed mantra of a person stripped of their confidence. The girl agreed with him.

He stood and drew his saber again from his belt. Her eyes did not follow him and she did not flinch at the whumping pulse of its ignition.

She said something in a voice so soft he didn’t hear it over the sizzling crackle of his lightsaber, all the worse for wear since their battle in the snow of Starkiller. Without his gloves, the heat of the hilt was almost unbearable, and he used this pain to fuel his resolve.

“Stand up.”

She did, but she spoke again, louder this time. “I don’t want to die.”

Kylo Ren laughed. It was a cruel gesture and the noise sounded vulgar from his lips. But he couldn’t fathom how this slip of a girl with no happiness but what a full belly could bring still wanted so desperately to live that she would announce it over the flare of his saber. There was still some bravery in her. That surprise at her happy contradictions washed over him again and seasoned his laughter to something hard and regretful.

“You have to show me something, girl.” His voice was too loud, augmented by his pain as well as his desperation. He didn’t want to kill her, he realized. She was surprising and broken and brave. Contrary in the face of relief from the sad chore of living. It seemed a kriffing waste to kill her, but he needed more than surprising fearlessness. “I need you to show me what your life is worth.”

They were cruel words, but the world Kylo knew was not kind. The world that might save this girl was not kind. It could do far worse than demand she demonstrate her value, and if she did, it likely would.

Her hand glowed faintly red in the light of his lit weapon as she lifted it over the table. Her hand hovered over her water cup from her dinner and a look of concentration hardened her face. The cup rose from the tray, slow and very controlled. 

Kylo sighed. It was nothing more than a paltry Padawan trick; one he, too, would have been proud of accomplishing after less than a year of study. But it wasn’t nearly enough to save her.

“Is that all?” he asked as he shifted his saber infinitesimally closer to her, his resignation already heavy in his voice. 

Her eyes shot sharply to his and he felt the absurd compulsion to take a step away. She looked at him with something like defiance, like confidence. Something like power. Then he felt the pulse of energy.

All around him, things began to slowly rise. What few things were left on his shelves, the chairs, the table, and every item on the table in their own separate ascent. All slow and controlled and with what seemed to be very little effort from the scavenger. He looked beyond her into the ‘fresher and saw the taps of the sink, the shower, even the bathtub that she had previously not known how to operate all spurt steaming water while his small collection of toiletries lifted from the worktops and sides of the tub. A glance to his bedroom, the door of which was barely ajar, showed him that, even in this room of which she knew nothing, any item that was not bolted to the floor was beginning a slow ascent from their rightful places. The lights of his rooms began to flicker and even the sparks from his saber seemed to bend to this energy.

When he turned his wondering gaze back to her, her face still held that note of challenge, of daring, and yet this feat seemed to not affect her at all. What confidence he had had in her weakness was beginning to crumble, and he wondered in almost frightened confusion why this girl, this woman, who seeped power from her very pores, had bent so easily to him. Whether he had actually seen the depths of her mind.

Before he could complete this thought, she turned her outstretched hand over, and everything that she held in the air began to slowly drift back down. The water stopped pouring from the taps and the lights steadied. She added her other hand to this, upturned as if waiting for something to land in them. 

Kylo Ren shut off his lightsaber as he watched his helmet drift from its shelf and brush past him, touching him lightly on the arm as it moved as if on a track to the girl’s waiting hands. It settled softly into her, and she held it out to him in an offer he didn’t know that she had the power to make.

He should kill her. He should kill her right now, watch her blood spatter on the visor of his own helm that she held so reverently in her hands. He should end this trickster who wore sadness like he wore his mask and who hid power he couldn’t imagine in the spaces between her fragile bones.

She was a danger, and his fascination with her was going to ruin everything.

He yanked the helmet from her hands and pushed it roughly onto his head as he made to exit his chamber, scraping the hard metal sharply against the scar tissue on his cheek. He thought briefly of restraining the girl but damn near laughed at the thought. _What would be the fucking point? Had her struggle with the bonds at her wrists been an act as well?_

Just as the door swiped open, her voice called from behind him. “Where are you going?”

He sighed, a heavy sound through his mask’s modulator. 

“I’m going to talk to the Supreme Leader.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment to tell me what you thought! I appreciate any and all feedback; it only helps me to improve as a writer.


	3. Spoiled Little Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the tags for this fic have changed to include violence and abuse. Snoke is a son of a bitch.
> 
> **Please note:** This chapter has been tweaked and edited, the new version posted as of November 2nd (11/02/2016). The edits are not extreme and don't necessarily require a second read if you read it previously. I'm just leaning a little more heavily on some themes.

Kylo Ren wasn’t sure what he was going to say to Supreme Leader Snoke. He didn’t often visit his master when not summoned directly, and never so late in a day cycle. He wondered detachedly if Snoke slept, or ate, or indeed left the room beyond this door. He was a living creature, under all that power, and Kylo supposed it would follow that he would perform such mundane tasks as these. 

Kylo shook the absurd thoughts from his head, reaching a hand out to open the door. He was stalling, and he knew it; he was afraid to go to his master. Snoke had given him a singular task and had already commanded against that which he was coming to request. Kylo knew that whatever discussion awaited him beyond this door, it was not to be pleasant.

_Come in, Kylo Ren._

The Supreme Leader’s voice spiked through Kylo’s mind, a slicing intrusion that took no care for the mind it invaded. It was not from Snoke that Kylo had learned his more gentle methods of navigating others’ thoughts, but rather from his own perfection of a form of self-preservation. To see inside, he learned, one did not _have_ to cut the thing open. The fact that Snoke disregarded these niceties was very telling of his master’s superior mental fortitude.

_I know why you are here,_ came his master’s voice again, and Kylo swiped the door open.

That heat hit him again, brought him quickly from the hallway’s calm cool to the weight of his current mission. 

“I know why you are here,” Snoke said again, his great voice filling the sweltering room. “Though, I would have you say it out loud yourself. How will you defend your insubordination?”

“Master---”

The pain that shot through Kylo Ren was like lightning up his spine. His knees gave way beneath him and his breath punched out of him like a blaster shot.

“I am your master, Kylo Ren, and you would do well to remember it.” His voice was a thunder clap that heralded the storm. “I sent you from here with the explicit order to kill the girl. Now, tell me why she lives?”

Kylo took in a shaking breath but remained on the floor, kneeling before the cruel being on the dais. Any amount of supplication would surely only aid his cause. “She has great power, Master. I have seen it. I did not think it was wise to---”

Kylo knew the moment the words left his lips that they were the incorrect ones, and that flash of pain shot through him again.

“You thought it unwise? Are you suddenly more knowledgeable than your Supreme Leader? Tell the truth!”

His mask’s modulator was crackling with each labored breath. Kylo realized that he’d bitten through his lip and the blood was draining into the delicate mechanism that transformed his voice into something more formidable than can be achieved by flesh alone. When he spoke, the modulator popped and hissed as it shorted.

“It would be a waste to snuff such power--!” His words were lost in an anguished groan. Kylo felt that impact again, that pain borne of his own nerves set against him in agonizing treason. That was the worst part of Snoke’s methods: it was Kylo’s own body that supplied the pain, that bent to the Force of Snoke. It was only what his body was capable of withstanding, and the fact that it crippled him so thoroughly was almost as excruciating as the jolts of power.

_Tell the truth._

That knife in his mind again, butchering his thoughts.

“She is like me, Master! Sh-she is unstable, but monstrously powerful. Were you not wise in kindling my abilities, in harnessing them for the Dark Side, rather than destroying it along with those others whom I killed?”

Snoke chuckled, that humorless noise that ran an impossible chill over Kylo’s feverish skin.

“Clever boy. Appealing to my vanity. Though--” another dose of pain, one that had Kylo spurting the blood from his ruined lip over the inside of his mask’s visor--“I know it is still not the truth. Do tell me. I don’t enjoy this.”

His master’s voice held little warmth and he found that he did not believe him. Kylo fumbled with the release mechanism of the mask, the blood covered visor blinding him and rippling a claustrophobic panic over his twitching muscles. Once free, he gulped greedy lungfuls of hot, ashen air like it were purest oxygen.

“Why is the girl alive, Kylo Ren?”

The gentleness of Snoke’s words paralyzed Kylo where he lay, crumpled and utterly spent. He knew then that if his next words weren’t correct, they might also be his last.

“Be-because I want her to be alive.” He swallowed, more blood than anything else, and his empty stomach turned. “That is the simple truth. Because I want it.”

There was a long silence in which Kylo only breathed, waiting for his life’s end, or the painful burden of its continuance. 

“Spoiled little thing.”

It was only when the pressure dissipated that Kylo realized that Snoke had been forcing him down to the ground. Its lifting gave him the freedom of his first deep breath in some minutes, and the movement was more painful than therapeutic.

“Have I not given you everything? Have you wanted for nothing these fifteen years? I saved you, Kylo Ren, from the wasted life to which Luke Skywalker would have confined you.”

Kylo nodded against the hot grit of the floor, the blood oozing from his lip made sticky with the grime smearing onto his cheek. Shame washed over him as he listened to his master. As he understood. “Yes, Supreme Leader. You have been good to me.”

“And yet you want? You are ungrateful. Unworthy of your place as Master of the Knights of Ren.” 

Kylo squeezed his eyes shut at this accusation. He felt compelled to assure his master that the girl was as good as dead. This time, he would do what was asked of him because it was right, and not question it.

But the words wouldn’t come. He lightly chewed on his injured lip, igniting fresh pain for this weakness. He couldn’t say it, even knowing that he was wrong and that the Supreme Leader was right. 

He was worthless.

Kylo almost welcomed the pain of his master’s entry into his mind, then. It was no less than what he deserved. He witnessed in agonizing clarity his release of the girl from her chains, his activating the taps of the bathtub for her. Handing her his favorite meal while she sat there with wet hair and bare feet. It was with great care that he shielded Snoke from his glimpse into the girl’s mind, those private memories he had plucked like petals from a wilting flower. Only those memories that would save her, her conflict, her frustration, did he let past the silent wall he built.

And Snoke saw her tell Kylo that she didn’t want to die. Saw her lift every loose thing in his quarters with little more than a shifting of fingers.

“You are a fool.” Snoke exited Kylo’s mind, leaving a pulsing absence in his wake. “I am ever an indulgent master, when it comes to you. It would seem that you are not the only weak creature in this room.” Kylo closed his eyes at the words, afraid to hope and afraid his emotions would show plainly on his naked face.

“You may keep her,” Snoke said simply, his tone clipped and punishing.

Kylo didn’t know whether to be relieved or all the more terrified. Something else was on the heels of this allowance, and he knew it would not bode well for him or the girl.

“You may keep her, but you must test her. You know pain, Kylo Ren.” Cool, spectral fingers seemed to trail through his hair, though they brought no comfort. “You know a life infused with it. That is the life she’ll share with you, if you want her.” 

Kylo knew then what his Master would have him do to test her. How he would have her measured. It would either do what he could not and kill her outright, or, worse yet, bind her to him forever. His stomach, filled with blood and bile, heaved again and he was neatly sick next to his discarded helmet.

"I am your master, but I am still your teacher,” Snoke continued when Kylo’s stomach was spent. “I will let you have her, but for the lessons you will learn from it. If she is what you think, you will learn how damnable it is to shape power into a useful thing. You will learn the agony of creating a diamond from worthless coal, as I have.” He paused, and Kylo felt compelled for the first time since entering the room to look up into the face of his master. He watched that sunken mouth pronounce his damnation in slow, deliberate syllables. “If she is not, if she has again deceived you, my dutiful son, you will die. If this girl threatens our goals, I will kill you, if she doesn't kill you first.”

“Y-yes, Supreme Leader.”

Kylo managed to stand, to dip a painful bow, and make his way to the door that would lead him away from this experiment in torture.

“Do not bring her before me,” Snoke called from behind him. Kylo paused, though he did not think he had the strength to turn and face the Supreme Leader again. “Indeed, don’t reveal to her that I am on-world. I am not so naive as you, Kylo Ren, to believe a broken mirror.”

After staggering from Snoke’s great room, his helmet dangling from his fingers, Kylo collapsed against the cool durasteel wall of the hallway. With shaking fingers he wiped at the drying blood from the lenses of his visor. The vision in his right eye was somewhat blurred and he hadn’t realized its dull throbbing until he sat in the quiet of a military base mostly sleeping.

The girl had been pardoned, in a sense. But had he doomed her to a fate much worse than a quick slash with a lightsaber, freshly bathed and recently fed? He pushed the mask back on his head and stood on unsteady legs. He pulled what little strength he could from his connection with the Force and made confident strides to his quarters.

The stormtroopers he had curtly assigned to stand guard by his door stood still and undisturbed, and Kylo took some comfort in this. It was likely, then, that the girl had not escaped. He made a wide sweeping motion with his outstretched hand and the troopers were knocked violently aside. He heard them noisily clamoring back to their feet as the door to the antechamber closed behind him.

His heart faltered in his chest when he opened the inner door and did not immediately see the girl. Movement to his right caught his eye and he turned to see her wrist deep in the fractured panel on the wall.

She had pulled on his discarded gloves to insulate her fingers from electric shock and was attempting to resplice the severed wires by hand. The too large gloves muddled her movements and was making a clumsy job of her work. 

Something about this, the familiarity with which she handled-- _fixed_ \--his things, tripped a switch within him. He pulled his saber from his belt and ignited it.

The scavenger turned from her work, apparently startled. The jagged glass of the cracked screen caught a finger of one of his gloves and the thing pulled from her hand. Bright red blood stood on the tip of her first finger, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Say it again,” Kylo demanded. The modulator in the mask had deteriorated further, causing his voice to come in static bursts. The girl’s gaze was fixed on his crackling lightsaber, her eyes wide.

“Say what again?” she asked, her voice far away as she stared at what might kill her.

“Tell me again that you don’t want to die.”

She looked up at that and, for some reason, Kylo noticed a single drop of blood fall from her cut finger to the recently cleaned floor.

“I don’t want to die.”

He went to her, crowded her against the far wall as she stumbled away from him. As clumsy as if they were facing off again in the forest, in the snow. Her hand fumbled at the place where her weapon should be, though there was nothing there.

“Your life as you know it is over, scavenger. Either I kill you here, now, or you continue here with me. Either way, your life in the Light is done.” He reached out a hand and tightly gripped her jaw. Her skin was hot beneath his bare hand and he wondered detachedly when he had last touched the skin of another person. “You can’t go back. You won’t be allowed to leave. I will show you what sacrifices come with making this choice and I will teach you what pain is.”

He expected her to break, to crumble. He was echoing the words spoken to him by Snoke only minutes before, and he had been sick, had physically rejected the very idea. But she stood firm, tears shining in her eyes, and did not attempt to pull from his grasp.

He released her.

“Tell me that you don’t want to die.”

She tipped up her chin, and Kylo Ren felt the wild compulsion to reach out and touch her again. To pinch that sharp chin between his fingers and hold her in this defiant posture until the walls crumbled around them.

“I don’t want to die.”

He stepped away and extinguished his saber in one swift movement.

“Very well.”

He replaced the hilt at his belt and reached to remove his helmet one last time for the night. When he looked back at the foolish girl still living and breathing not feet from him, she gasped at the sight of him. Worse still, she reached a hand toward him, as if to soothe him, as if to fix this hurt like she tried to fix the busted panel in his wall. With a snarl, he brushed past her outstretched hand and walked to the ‘fresher.

Standing before the large mirror, he saw now the reason for her gasp. His lower lip was black with blood and bruising, yellow pockets of fat showing through in the deepest parts of the wound. His right eye was blood red from the capillaries bursting and the pupil was blown wide. That explained the blurred vision. He clenched his lips shut and exhaled, forcing air through the injury in his lip and spattering the mirror with blood. It hurt very much.

He then collapsed onto his forearms on the worktop in loud, angry tears. 

It was some time before he was able to collect himself. Straightening his arms, he looked down at the mess his bleeding and blubbering had made of the countertop. He swiped a hand absently through the spit and gore and tears, only vaguely hearing the door to the fresher click closed. 

The girl was holding out a towel, her face carefully blank. He considered her for a moment, the trouble this little nothing had caused him in the last hours. Contemplated choking the life out of her or at least throwing her from the room. He thought again, only briefly, of pinching that stubborn chin in his fingers and angling her face to his.

He took the towel from her and wiped at his hands, then the counter. Once a section was clean enough, she set down a first aid kit and began to go through its contents.

“You use this a lot, I think,” she said. Something in her quiet voice sent shame through him. As if she were afraid to set him off again. “There’s hardly anything left in it.”

His hands were planted again on the edge of the sink, his head hanging and his shoulders tense. The girl had heard him. The girl had seen him. How often was she to be witness to his weaknesses? How was it that he could seem to show her nothing but failures?

She suddenly reached for him, bacta smeared on her fingertips. He jerked sharply away from her and caught her wrist instead, squeezing just this side of too hard. Kylo swiped the ointment from her skin, its oily texture causing his fingers to glide smoothly over hers. He held on to her wrist as he applied it, wanting no other attempts at assistance. He hissed at the sensation of the bacta stitching his skin back together. It wasn’t meant to be unpleasant; some even found the sensation euphoric, but skin healing that quickly always felt unnatural to him.

“You’ll need a butterfly bandage to hold that closed, bacta or no.”

He released her.

Kylo didn’t answer, but grunted something like agreement. He took the bandage from her--at least she seemed done trying to touch him--and applied it the best he could, bringing the tender flesh back together. It would likely still scar, he thought, as he looked blandly at his wretched reflection.

“Did Snoke do that to you?”

His eyes darted to hers in the blood spattered mirror. “It’s ‘Supreme Leader’ or ‘Master,’ scavenger.”

She shook her head, that wide mouth tightening to a thin line. “He’s not my master.”

His lips twitched in what would be a smile if it didn’t hurt so much. “He is now.”

When he hadn’t been looking, she had apparently applied more bacta to her fingers and was now smearing the stuff across his glass-shredded knuckles. He pulled his hand away.

“Will you stop doing that?” Kylo snapped. “Not every cut and scrape needs to be doctored away.”

She ignored him and reached again for the tube of ointment. He snatched it from under her hand. He squeezed some of the greasy stuff out with a snarl and caught that reaching hand. He looked her boldly in the eye as he applied it to the cut on her first finger, though it was small and no longer bleeding. She looked slightly dazed as he did so, gasping at the cool tingle of bacta on her skin, and he noticed for the first time how her hair curled about her hairline, as fine as a child’s.

“What--what,” she started, licking her lips and searching his face for the answer to the question she was having trouble forming. “What did you say to Sn--to the Supreme Leader? What should I…” Her voice trailed off and her slender hand moved in his. He hadn’t realized he still held it, but now that he did, Kylo didn’t think he could let it go. 

“What now?” she breathed.

He took one more moment to look at her before answering. She was hard, but whole. Half starved, but sane. He wanted to remember the girl like this, as a person with her own mind and her own sense of determination, for as long as he could. It was easy to forget how things used to be, once your life was no longer your own.

“What do you know about the Knights of Ren?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment to tell me what you thought! I appreciate any and all feedback; it only helps me to improve as a writer.


	4. A Fair Match

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so excited to be updating this story! I apologize for the inordinately long wait; life catches up to you sometimes and these have been a rough couple of months. I am not promising that updates will be more frequent and regular now, but I am much more hopeful that they will be! May this chapter be worth the wait.
> 
> This is your friendly reminder that this is a slow burn. ;) Also, the previous three chapters have been tweaked, edited, and updated. They aren't extreme or plotty edits, so you don't have to read them again if you've read them already. I just leaned more heavily on themes and tried to tighten up my prose a bit.
> 
> Thank you to both **SouthSideStory** and **politicalmamaduck** for making this chapter the best it could be.

“The Knights of Ren?” She sounded hesitant, and Kylo knew from this alone that she was frightened, try as she might to hide it. “I don’t know much. Only what people aren’t too afraid to say. That they are a murderous group. Mercenaries for the Dark Side.” She looked away, wiped at the bacta on her fingertip and the thin pink cut that was mostly healed beneath it. “That you are their leader.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” he said once she fell silent. “But the rest… There’s a bit more to it than that.”

Kylo gathered the few pieces of the first aid kit and exited the ‘fresher. He replaced the kit on the shelf and took a seat at the small table. The girl seemed to be delaying joining him, so he continued anyway.

“The Knights aren’t exactly mercenaries. And we aren’t strictly loyal to the Dark.”

The girl was pacing the far wall now, looking at the mostly bare shelves. There was one piece of robotics that she hadn’t managed to smash earlier, and she took it into her hands and turned it over. It was a simple thing, with continuous track wheels and a wicked hook attached to a reinforced arm that would strike down with mighty force at random intervals. The little thing hadn’t worked in years, however, and Kylo found that he had less and less time and energy to try to repair it.

She was looking closely at it, toying with the tiny compressor cylinder that controlled the pneumatic arm. Scratched a fingernail at the oxidized piston arm, then swabbed this same finger through her mouth to wipe at the arm with saliva.

“Are you listening?”

She looked up, her eyes oddly bright, as if she were trying to keep tears from forming.

“You aren’t strictly murderers and aren’t exactly at the beck and call of the Supreme Leader. Yes, I’m listening.”

Kylo bristled a bit at this simplification and mockery of his explanation, but continued. “The Knights of Ren chose to align ourselves with Snoke because his agenda complements our own.”

The girl spat in earnest on the compressor arm, and with just enough force, was able to coax the arm into movement. “And what is your agenda?” she asked.

Kylo watched her play with the dials controlling the pneumatics, then set the crude little thing down on the floor, adjusting the angle of the arm.

“Only a Knight of Ren can know that.”

The hooked arm made a sharp pinging noise as it clanked down onto the polished floor, a much harder strike than what Kylo had originally calibrated, and then wheeled off away from her bare feet.

She looked up at him. “Are you asking me to join?”

The robot wheeled noisily into a wall, redirected with some difficulty from the continuous track wheels, then headed in Kylo’s direction. He rested his boot lightly on top of it when it neared him and listened as the arm beat down harmlessly on the floor.

“It’s not quite that simple.” He reached for the squabbling contraption beneath his boot, hissing when the hook managed to prick his hand. He looked to the girl, who seemed content, for once, to let him bleed. One of those tears she hadn’t wanted to shed was dripping from her jaw’s hard edge. “You should get some sleep. Tomorrow will be the first of a great string of long days.”

She flinched when he reached past her to place the now stilled mechanism back on the shelf. The movement struck him, and he reached a crooked finger to wipe the wet track left by the tear. She sighed, a small thing, and seemed to relax under his touch. Her skin was always hot beneath his, like she had just come in from standing in the sun. How many times had he touched her this evening? Her jaw, her wrist, her hand. It was a compulsion he could see very easily becoming a habit if he wasn’t careful.

“Where am I going to sleep, Kylo Ren?” She kept her head still under his slow, feather-light touches, but brought her eyes to his.

He couldn’t take his hand from her face. Not yet. He traced the track of the tear until it was dry, then followed the line of her jaw to her hairline, touching that fine, slightly curling hair at her temple. “Just ‘Kylo’ will do,” he answered. His voice was low, as though he were afraid to startle her away from him were he to make any sudden movements. Her hair was soft, and without quite realizing it, he trailed his fingers through it, pushing it away from her face. When he met her eyes again, saw the hesitancy and expectation in them, the implications of her question were plain.

He stepped away.

“You’ll sleep in my bed tonight. I’ll figure out a more permanent solution tomorrow.”

 _What is this girl to me?_ he wondered briefly. _My ward? Myapprentice?_ He scrubbed a hand through his hair, the hand that kept reaching to touch her. _His prisoner, most likely. Doomed to an arduous sentence._

Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes suddenly downcast. She hadn’t moved from her place along the wall and her voice was halting as she spoke. Halting, but strong. “Where will you be sleeping, Kylo?”

 _You’ll sleep in my bed tonight._ He shook his head. He hadn’t meant--!

But then he paused. Kylo allowed one moment, one brief moment, of imagining the heat of her body laid along his, hotter still in deep sleep, as he laid back in his bed. Of what comfort could be kindled in the feel of sheets already warmed by another body. Thought of that soft hair fanned on her pillow and spilled onto his, of holding a piece of it between his fingers while he laid beside her.

He hated his bed, empty though it was, he never quite felt alone in it. Sleep was supposed to be a time of peace, of rest and recuperation. But his was only ever haunted by the deeds done when he was awake, and the whisper of his master followed him even as he settled under the sheets. All he’d ever wanted was to sleep alone, and now he was imagining the girl laid alongside him...

Then he straightened and made special effort to extinguish his smile that would reveal this pitiful fantasy and frighten the girl, who already knew more fear than what would make for peaceful rest.

“I don’t sleep,” he assured her before turning his back on her. He didn’t exhale until he heard the door to his bedroom click closed.

* * *

 

There was much to be done for the girl. She couldn’t continue to live in his quarters, though he did want to keep her close. There were rooms neighboring his that were almost as well equipped, if he remembered correctly. He strode from the room to the antechamber that housed both living quarters’ front doors. He checked the rooms quickly and judged them to be perfectly adequate.

Though he lamented that there wasn’t a bathtub in the ‘fresher. She would have liked that.

He shook the sentimental thought from his head and returned to his quarters. The girl was driving him to distraction. If he’d been thinking straight for just a moment, he would have remembered these adjoining rooms before offering her a place in his own bed. Even the thought of it burned at his ears, and he pinched at the offending tips of them.

A mad compulsion took him over then, and he walked briskly to the bedroom door. He quietly slid it open but did not enter the room.

She had left a small lamp lit over the bed, and he could see her clearly. She was facing away from him and looked impossibly tiny in his large bed. She could stretch herself to her full extent, arms out and legs splayed, and not come close to the edges of the mattress. And yet, she was curled into a tight ball, folded in on herself as if to protect her softest parts. A small, sleepy sound huffed out of her, and he stiffened, backing quickly away from the door. Kylo reached to close it again, but his hand never made contact. He instead walked back to his chair and settled in again with his holopad, determined to finish what needed to be done for the girl’s integration into life on-base.

He chose not to think too closely about why his eyes always seemed to drift to the ajar bedroom door and the sleeping girl beyond, nor how his ears were pricked so keenly for any noise she might make that he started at every soft chirp of technology within the suite.

Calm was not a common companion for Kylo Ren in the ever-long night cycles of the base, especially not after a disastrous meeting with his master. But tonight, with every sigh from his bedroom and quiet rustling of sheets, he felt it creeping into his very bones. Warm and deep and foreign. His injuries’ insistent pain seemed to blur around the edges, and his breathing settled into a slower and slower rhythm.

He woke to the sound of clattering metal. His head snapped up from where it had lolled onto his chest and his hand went immediately to his saber at his belt. His reaching hand met empty space and he snapped further to attention. The saber was on the floor at his feet, along with the holopad, both having apparently fallen at some point during the night. The girl was on the floor as well, with various tools surrounding her and a spool of insulated wire laying partially unwound at her hip. Kylo reached slowly for his weapon, and the girl was gracious enough to pretend that she did not notice.

His mask was disassembled before her, the front of it resting on the floor between her thighs. She was using a decidedly decrepit-looking soldering iron that he had forgotten he even owned to replace connective wires in the mechanism of the modulator. He opened his mouth to demand what right she thought she had to do such a thing, but she silenced him.

“I thought you said you didn’t sleep.” She didn’t look up when she spoke, and her voice was gentle, like the curl of smoke that wafted from his helmet when she affixed a fresh wire with the iron.

“I...don’t,” he answered, though the sentiment was absurd given the crick in his neck from doing just that. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept more than a few scant snatches here and there, and that was only after prolonged meditation and practically forcing his body into unconsciousness. Kylo Ren was sure that he had never dozed off in a chair. Certainly never slept through his saber disconnecting with his belt.

“What are you doing?”

She kept her eyes on her work as she answered. “You know what I’m doing. Why ask?”

“Fair enough. _Why_ are you doing it?”

She set aside her tools and turned the mask in her hands, looking at the exposed mechanism from several angles. Kylo watched in amazement as she did possibly the last thing he expected: the girl lifted his helmet and placed it on her own head.

“Because,” her voice sounded through the now fixed modulator. “If I sat still for one more hour I would have started climbing the walls.”

The sound of her deep, affecting voice through the mechanism of his helm did something queer to Kylo’s insides. He felt his breath catch in his throat at how it further dulled her already rounded consonants, how the thing’s odd clicking augmentations settled too naturally into her speech rhythm. He felt oddly dizzy and altogether impatient.

“Take that off, scavenger.”

She did, pulling it from her head and making further adjustments, though it sounded in full working order to him. “I have a name, you know.”

“I know.”

Kylo stood and walked to his bedroom. He quickly checked for any signs of attempted escape, and found none. She might have tried something easily enough, especially as he was stupid enough to leave tools where she could find them. But the room looked much as it had when he’d last seen it, though she didn’t make the bed. He could still see the small imprint of her body in his space, where her head had laid on his pillow, how her feet had kicked his sheets.

“You didn’t try to escape.”

She didn’t answer, and when he looked back at her, he saw that she was affixing the inner guard to his mask, apparently satisfied with her work.

“Why didn’t you?”

She turned the mask to face her, setting it on the floor and wiping a smudge from the visor.

“I was tired.”

He almost laughed at this, as if she were implying that she might well try once she’d caught up on sleep. This thought stilled him, and he shook his head at his stupidity all over again. He could not trust this girl, no matter how keenly she piqued his interest. She was clever; her every action confirmed this. Too clever to be an idle captive, the proof of which sat cleaned and repaired between her thighs.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

She looked up at him for the first time, and he saw what improvements a good night’s rest could have on her already pleasant face. Her hair needed brushing, and one of her bold eyebrows was slightly mussed, giving her a quizzical turn to her expression. But her eyes looked clear and her cheeks were flushed with color, rose and bronze. She looked like she wanted to smile, but her mouth remained tight.

“Starving.”

He nodded. “Let me show you how to order food on the holo pad.”

* * *

 

Kylo sent her to the medbay guarded by two security droids. His first inclination was to take her himself, but that painted a picture he wasn’t comfortable with just yet. A legion of stormtroopers looked even worse. At least security droids could not be swayed by the girl’s mind tricks and would see to it that she made it to her destination; if she tried to escape, they would also see to it that she would not make it very far uninjured. The scavenger had likely never been immunized, and he required his subordinates to have a clean bill of health before beginning duty. It was unlikely the girl suffered from anything greater than malnutrition, but after all of this, he wanted to take no chances.

In her absence, Kylo made quick use of his ‘fresher and oversaw preparing her new quarters. He personally checked each of the air ducts and security panels, making adjustments where needed. There were others he could order to do this, but if this all ended badly, Kylo wanted to know that it was only he who could be blamed. When all was accomplished, he made certain that the training arena would be free for the rest of the day cycle. He did not want them to be disturbed.

Now he stood in the middle of his sitting room, facing the open door to his bedroom. He had still not made the bed and stared hard at the mussed sheets. He, too, felt anxious at being idle. He thought back to finding the girl with his helmet this morning, at finding her wrist deep in the destroyed panel on his wall. The voice modulator on the helm worked better than it ever had, his voice coming clearer and cleaner through the mechanism as he gave out curt instructions during the morning. Her tools-- _his tools--_ were still on the floor, though in a pile out of the way. He considered these tools, wondering how long it would be before the girl would return.

Kylo removed his helmet and stooped to gather what tools he might need. After calling for a replacement glass screen, he picked up where the scavenger had left off on the destroyed wall panel.

She was delivered some time later in dark clothes that fit and sturdy boots on her feet. She wore a fitted sleeveless top and held a bundle of more black clothes to her chest. Kylo noticed a bandage around her upper left arm and scoffed.

“How many immunizations did you need to have?” he asked with some measure of bewilderment as he gestured at the dressing.

She glanced at it before answering. “I had them give me a contraceptive implant.”

Her words were droll and stiff, though he noticed her cheeks colored at the implication while she looked him in the eye. He worried the inside of his injured lip with his teeth and said nothing, though his heart lurched in his chest.

“I’ll show you your quarters.”

There wasn’t much to show her, as the rooms were very nearly identical to his. This made the absence of the bathtub all the more obvious, and he found himself offering her the use of his if she wanted. She was looking at him strangely, which in itself wasn’t strange at all. She was a prisoner here, a captive turned traitor, and he was offering her his bathtub. It wasn’t half a day cycle ago that he was pinning her against the wall, lightsaber lit, demanding that she ask him again to spare her life.

He straightened, hoping to banish the stiffness of both his shoulder and the moment and made a careless gesture toward the door. “Come on, scavenger.”

“Stop,” she said.

And he did.

She narrowed those eyes at him, a gaze that could halt someone in their tracks without calling upon the Force. Her eyes were green and brown and black, like all the parts of a forest, and just as deep.

“Say my name,” she said, and Kylo felt a spike of shame at her clipped tone.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I'm not. I've bathed in your ‘fresher, slept in your bed, and fixed your ridiculous mask.” She reached up and sharply pinched the sloping scar at his cheek. “I gave you your most prominent facial feature. “

Kylo opened his mouth to stop her, but she kept going. “And you! You've nearly killed me three times! Kidnapped me twice.” He was clenching his jaw so tightly that his teeth were bared, but she stepped closer to him. “Gave me food, the comforts of a hot bath. Fought for--” she shoved him when he tried to object, “-- _fought for_ my life at the hands of the most powerful creature I've ever heard of.” Her voice changed, and it was as if these kindnesses were somehow worse than the attempts on her life. Kylo wasn’t sure that they weren’t.

“And you gave me your name. _Kylo._ ” She shoved him again and he caught her wrist in his hand, his leather glove creaking as he squeezed.

“You _took_ my name,” she hissed. “Rifled through every part of me and plucked it out of my head.” She tried to pull out of his grip and only succeeded in pulling herself closer to him. It didn't seem to matter. She stared boldly up at him with those forest eyes. “So use it.”

He dropped her wrist but immediately took her chin between his thumb and finger. Roughly tugged her to stand as tall as she was able, and she was a tall thing.

“Rey.”

A moment passed, a pulse between them that had Kylo glancing down to her mouth. Her lips were still chapped from whatever elements she’d had to weather before the First Order had picked her up.

They would be as rough as the rest of her.

She ripped her face from his grasp and walked past him, her hand ghosting over her lips as she glanced back at him.

He rubbed his fingers together for a moment before following her out of the ‘fresher. “What are you doing?”

She was at the wall panel and didn’t turn to face him when she answered. “Ordering food.”

She’d only eaten a few hours ago, double portions at that, but Kylo wondered if she had ever had such ready access to food and didn’t stop her. “Keep it light,” he warned. “Going to the training grounds on an overly full stomach is never a good idea.”

Her finger paused over the panel, curling briefly into her fist, before she extended it again and finished her order. “What’s at the training grounds?”

Kylo waited for her to turn toward him before answering.

“A fair match.”

 

* * *

 

The training arena on Mustafar was not what Kylo had become accustomed to. The First Order had control over many things, the foremost of which was money. It would be a lie for Kylo to say that this flaunting of wealth in training its soldiers was not one of the Order’s more seductive aspects. He had wanted for nothing in his years of training, finding the precision and freedom to develop the hardest of techniques that only came with the most robust and versatile equipment and training droids.

This theatre, however, was little more than training mats and racks of crude weaponry. It was the result of a hard loss and an unexpected hit to the consistent flow of financial backing the Order had come to know. After the destruction of Starkiller, the galaxy feared them less and gave their money accordingly.

But as the girl, as _Rey_ trailed fingers over the wicked looking things in the racks against the far wall, Kylo decided this was likely a better fit for her anyway. All she’d ever known was cobbling together what was left to survive.

“Pick something.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, that wide mouth drawn tight. Her hands fell to a sturdy quarterstaff. She pulled it from the rack, flecks of rust and dried blood sticking to her palms as she shifted it between her hands, testing its considerable weight.

Kylo reached for a weighted saber, much heavier than what he usually chose for sparring, but given the heft of Rey’s chosen weapon, he thought it appropriate. He had promised a fair match, after all.

She settled to the balls of her feet across from him and he noted that this would be the first thing to train out of her. Too easy to lose one’s balance. He began to circle her and she countered him, though inelegantly.

“What do you know about forms?” His voice was clear and sharp through the repaired modulator.

“Nothing,” she answered.

He nodded and took a feinting step to the left. “And footwork?”

She matched him, but her center of balance was off. He could easily topple her. He spoke her answer with her.

“Nothing.”

_What had Luke Skywalker been doing with her?_

Rolling his shoulders, he made a shallow jab at her to see her reaction. She was wound too tight and responded in a lunge that put her too close--a good, aggressive defense against unskilled cretins looking for an easy fight from such a thin girl. But he knew better; he arched his saber over her and smacked her sharply across the shoulderblades.

“Dead.”

She was angry at his teasing, watching him closely. Already he could see that she’d lowered to the flats of her feet, her steps careful and her knees more bent. He feinted again and she was ready for it, mirroring his earlier move and arching over him to swing at his back. He ducked and brought his weapon down on her arm, hard enough to bruise and to knock her staff from her hands.

“Disarmed--in more ways than one had I been wielding a lit saber.”

She snarled and lunged at him empty-handed, and he spun out from her tenuous hold. “Enough of that. Retrieve your weapon and concentrate.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she barked, snatching her staff from the mat as if it weren’t a third of her body weight.

“Like what?” he asked as he deflected another angry blow, before jabbing her roughly in the shoulder with his saber’s blunted end. “Like you’re a petulant, motherless child?”

She landed a hit, a blow that could have cracked his sternum if she would get her head right. He shook off the ache and swept hard into her middle, knocking the breath from her.

 _Dead,_ he taunted, not in her ear but in her mind. _Don’t you know to protect your softest parts?_ He showed her his view of her from the night before, small in his bed and curled in on herself. _You protect yourself better when sleeping than you do fighting._

She pushed him from her mind.

“Or like you’re a lost cause? Unteachable?”

She wielded her staff almost like a saber now, double handed slashes and nearly acrobatic spins to add momentum in a bastardization of a form that he almost recognized. A form that he had been scolded against himself.

He kept her off, but only just. He felt a rib crack as she struck him hard in the side and he grunted, almost thanking her for it. He ground a fist into the splintered bone, breaking it further, and whirled on her.

A hard crack to her hand on her staff and he heard, nearly _felt_ , her knuckles fracture. She dropped the staff in a howl of pain and he caught it before it hit the ground. Leaning into the momentum of the catch, Kylo swung the staff at her legs, knocking her feet from beneath her. She crumpled too easily; he’d likely broken her ankle as well.

He tossed aside the staff and was on her prone body in a second. One hard downward strike with his blunted saber. One terrified widening of forest eyes. The saber struck so hard it punctured the mat, blunted tip or no, and cracked against the duracrete floor below.

Rey panted, her broken hand clutched to her chest as she glanced between the staff impaled in the mat not an inch from her neck and the hard glint of mask hiding Kylo’s furious snarl from her gaze. His knees were planted to either side of her hips and he was bearing down on her.

“Remember this fear.” His voice was sharp and crisp through the mask, as if she had repaired the modulator only so she could hear this warning more clearly. “Remember this anger.”

Kylo took a hand from his staff and pressed it into her swelling hand, pushing it into her chest. Saliva popped and hissed as she panted shuddering breaths from between gritted teeth, but she didn’t cry out. Kylo could feel the air growing denser. He could feel Rey tucking each facet of pain and rage and fear deep into herself; a scavenger with valuable salvage.

“Remember it,” he said with a final squeeze to her hand. “And use it.”

She blasted him from her with such force that when his body hit the far wall, his helm disengaged and flew from his head, skittering and spinning across the gritty floor. It came to a stop as she stepped her boot on it with frightening calm. Her hand, already turning black from bruising, was limp and forgotten at her side as she held him with her furious gaze.

He nodded, spitting blood onto the floor beside him.

“Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to let me know what you thought below! I truly appreciate any and all feedback. It's what helps me improve as a writer!


	5. The Knights of Ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to **SouthSideStory** for betaing this for me. Please be advised that the rating has upped to **E** for that **Graphic Depictions of Violence** tag, and that this chapter works to earn that tag. Apologies for the lapse in updates. I will tell you this: I have every intention to finish this before Episode 8!

Kylo Ren took a quick inventory of his injuries and bit his cheek against grinning at the sheer number. He’d expected her to land a hit or two, but she’d broken bone. She’d drawn blood.

He looked across the room to her, and that inclination to smile dissipated. He’d broken more bones, if her limp hand and her favored leg were anything to go off of. He’d drawn a considerable amount more blood as well, as he watched it drool thickly from the corner of her lip. He’d probably knocked loose some molars in one of his defensive strikes.

“Come,” he said as he strode over to her, the sharp ache in his side doing nothing to slow his purposeful steps. “We’ll go to the med bay and get you healed.”

She nodded curtly, which he hadn’t expected. He wasn’t sure what he had been anticipating, but her quiet acceptance of medical attention was not it. He walked past her, but turned back when he heard her hiss of pain. She was limping after him, which was impressive given the state of her ankle. He couldn’t see it clearly in her training boots, but even disguised by thick leather, he could see it was bent in an unnatural angle.

Kylo said nothing as he walked back to her and brusquely scooped her into his arms. She squawked in surprise, and he did smile at that. It was a completely undignified noise, and one that spoke more of her humanity than her broken bones and bleeding face. Humanity was something he’d been sorely lacking in recent years, and he found that he welcomed hers.

She squirmed in his arms, though she didn’t attempt to get down. She was in no condition to walk, and he was glad that her stubborn nature didn’t extend to needless pain. He walked briskly down the long hallway to where the med droids and staff were stationed. Their faces were twisted in shock as they turned to face Kylo and Rey when he swiped open the door, and he glanced down at the girl in his arms. Surely she didn’t look _that_ beaten.

He set her down on the nearest bed and began barking orders for her care. A waist-deep bacta bath for her ankle and hand, then an examination of her teeth and jaw. He was half tempted to order that they get her completely back to new, but she’d learn little without a few aches and pains to fight through.

He turned to leave but her voice stopped him as he was stepping out the door.

“No.”

He sighed and turned back to her. Perhaps she was stubborn enough to think suffering the unaided healing process of multiple fractured bones was appropriate.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” he asked, his voice droll.

She sat up in the bed, wincing and cursing as she used her hand to help settle her weight. “I won’t get healed unless you do too, Kylo.”

There was another gasp from the closest med nurse and Kylo gritted his teeth at the sound. The girl was trying his patience, addressing him so informally in front of others. “I don’t need healing,” he said, glaring hard at her. “Don’t be stupid, _Rey._ ”

Her simple name had less of an impact than his had, but he tried to inject the hurt of having nothing but one name and no legacy into the lone syllable.

“You do,” Rey shot back. She glanced at the nurse, standing with a syringe held limply in his gloved hand. “Look at his face and you can see that he does.”

It was then that Kylo realized. His mask. It was still lying abandoned on the floor of the training arena. He’d forgotten to place it back on his head in his haste to get Rey seen after.

He’d never done that since he’d first donned the mantle of Kylo Ren--simply forgotten to place the thing back on his head. The death of Han Solo had been the only other event that had distracted him to that point.

The quivering nurse hadn’t been gaping at Rey, he’d been gaping at Kylo.

Rey turned to Kylo again, triumph in her eyes. “I won’t let them fix me unless you stay and get fixed too,” she said again. She left the _Kylo_ unspoken, but it rang through the room nonetheless. He glared at her, leaning into the motion when he knew that she could see his face entirely. She glared back, then attempted to get off the narrow cot.

“I told you not to be stupid,” he said, and she ignored him.

“If you think my injuries are grave enough to be magicked away with this--” she flapped her hand around the room, “--shit, then yours are too.” It hadn’t occurred to him until just then that she’d likely never known more than expired packages of bacta ointment and plasters for her past injuries.

He paused a moment longer, taking another step toward the door, and then he saw it: the smallest twinge of fear. He glanced around the room, trying to see it from Rey’s perspective. Hard white machinery and sharp-looking implements on trays. Sickly looking vats of liquid--which she was intended to sit in--and the smell of deadly cleanliness. The kind of clean that leaves nothing living, good or bad.

He nodded and walked past the nurse to sit, not lie, on the bed next to Rey’s. “I’ll stay,” he said. “Will you please lie down now and stop causing a scene?”

She nodded, not letting her relief show, but he sensed it nonetheless.

* * *

 

Rey was developing a bit of a pattern. She would start each morning with a knock on Kylo’s door--more of a kick, really--two plates of food in hand. He stupidly thought they were both for her the first morning she did so, and wasn’t sure why she wanted to eat her food in his rooms. But she left the other plate untouched, looking meaningfully to him.

“If you want something, you are going to have to say so,” he’d said. “I only read minds when it suits my needs, not the needs of others.”

“You should eat,” she had answered in a bored voice.

He did eat. A person didn’t get to his size and strength by not eating. But he didn’t eat hot food in a variety of tempting flavors or sauces. He had cold, protein infused distillates with calories and nutrients perfectly calculated for his training schedule. It was faster and more efficient that way, though not terribly enjoyable.

He ignored her offer of food, and she eventually ate most of his share anyway, before they left for the training arena. They took their second meal there, then would end the day in the med bay, repairing what bones had been shattered. He left off her ankles so she could walk on her own, and she in turn refrained from knocking his helmet from his shoulders.

These were the only mercies given. Every morning she greeted him with two plates of food and purpled eyes or black, split fingernails, or scabbed and swollen lips. Or some combination of these and others. His injuries were almost as numerous, but more carefully concealed.

It was her nightly ritual that most unbalanced Kylo. He could only assume that she ate in her own rooms, but then, after, she would knock on the door with a neat bundle of clothes in her arms and walk straight past him to his ‘fresher when he swiped the door open.

As if testing his resolve, or his patience, she took him up on his foolish offer of his bathtub and indulged in long, hot soaks every single night. Sometimes, on days she did particularly well on the training mats--like today, when she finally leaned into that swing like he’d been goading her to do for weeks, cracking his sternum and calling their lesson short to shuffle him to a bacta tank--she sang. They weren’t particularly joyful songs, or songs of victory or celebration. He wondered absently, as he scrolled through his holopad to the maudlin warble of her surprisingly deep voice, whether she even knew any happy songs. Jakku didn’t seem the place to learn them.

It was obscenely intimate, this thing she did. Singing while naked in his bathtub, the door just the slightest bit ajar. He knew that open door wasn’t an invitation. She barely spoke to him except to curse him when he landed a blow while sparring. More than likely, it was a taunt. A callback to her first night on this planet, when he’d invaded her privacy deliberately and made his first foolish offer to her. He tried not to think of that night, of her long body strung up for him like some macabre gift. He tried even harder to not think of what came after, of her naked in his ‘fresher, then barefooted in ill-fitting clothes, smelling like his soap.

But she insisted on reenacting that part of the night over and over--though her clothes fit better now.

He could withstand the strange breakfasts; he’d even eaten some of what she offered him this past morning--red-yolked eggs over hot buttered bread. He could allow himself to be stitched up at the end of the day at her insistence. He could even tolerate the bathing and singing within earshot, so long as he had enough intelligence to sift through on his holopad.

But the moment she stepped out at the end of it all, skin flush, hair damp, those narrow feet that were shades paler than any other part of her body he’d yet seen--this moment of stillness that she presented him with, over and over, as if waiting for... _something--_ it threatened to undo him. He’d been wound so tight for so many years, he feared if he unraveled now, he wouldn’t know what he’d expose from beneath.

So when she stood in front of him, once again smelling of his soap and somehow _looking_ warm to the touch, he fractured just a bit.

“Why do you do this?” he asked, his voice sharper than he meant.

She tilted her head at him. “Do what?”

He scoffed at her and rubbed a hand absently over the scar at his cheek. “You know what. This--” he gestured vaguely in the direction of the refresher. “All this,” he said, his hand now motioning to where she would soon be sitting in several hours’ time, a hot breakfast set before her on his small table. “We’re not--I’m not--”

Her brow crinkled in apparent confusion. “You’re all I’ve got, you know? This--” she exaggerated his motion to the ‘fresher and table, “All this? This is it for me. You said so. As of now, you are my entire universe, Kylo Ren. I’m just trying to figure out how to live in it.” She fidgeted with the ends of her wet hair, but didn’t look away from him.

There was a pulse in him, some mad compulsion to take a step toward her. Touch that still bath-hot skin and show her exactly how to live here. He ground the thought painfully from his mind, unsure how it even wormed its way there in the first place.

“That’s unacceptable,” he said after a moment of furious silence. He wasn’t sure if he meant her declaration, or his strange want of it. “Tomorrow, then. I’ll assemble my Knights and you’ll expand your universe, or die in the attempt.”

Something passed over her face. A wavering of...fear? Confidence? Certainty? It was gone before he could grasp it, translate that widening of eyes and tightening of lips into an emotion he could use.

“Wonderful,” she bit out before brushing past him to the door. He sucked in a breath at the contact and whirled to watch her leave. Her skin was flame-hot, even through his clothes and hers, and she had no reason to bump into him like that other than so he could know it first hand.

* * *

 

Kylo didn’t expect her to show up the next morning with her usual offering of food, but she did. She was always silent in the mornings, but her quiet was more present today. She ate more slowly as well, with less enthusiasm. This struck him the most: Rey was always excited for her next meal.

He sat and ate with her at this realization, not just picking at what she brought, but eating the entire tray of food. His stomach felt uncomfortable and tight after, but the shadow in her eyes seemed to lessen.

“There are a few hours left before the Knights are set to assemble, if you’d like--”

“Let’s train,” she said, interrupting his words. She didn’t meet his eyes.

He had been about to offer her a few more hours of rest before-- _before_. But if training was what she wanted for distraction, he would not deny her that.

He expected nervous questions of what was to come, or at least less passionate movements and forms in their sparring. He received neither, and though he worked to not injure her before her looming match, she did not reserve her energy at all. It worried him, if he was honest. She would be exhausted when the time came for her to fight. He did not care to think on her reasoning for this.

He caught sight of the wall clock and released a pulse of the Force to send her sprawling to her back. “Enough. They are coming.”

She rolled nimbly to her knees then jumped to her feet, her chest heaving and sweat gathered on her brow.

Kylo Ren felt cold.

He sensed his Knights before he saw them, the warm prickling of his skin and the taste and smell of ozone--as if in the wake of a lightning strike. They filed into the arena, and he watched Rey watching them. Theirs was not a silent parade, their mismatched armor and strange weaponry clanking in the echoing room. Her eyes flashed from one to the next, sharp and assessing. Pride twinged in him at her keen scavenger senses, weighing his soldiers like so much refuse, looking for the pieces most--or least--valuable. Even without his explanation, she seemed to understand, weighing each of them up as potential opponents.

The Knights formed a crude line, their disparate heights and girths united by their black garb, looking like the serrated teeth of a rusted blade. The air hummed in a way that was both familiar and foreign. He tasted the signature of each of his soldiers, but theirs was seasoned with Rey’s energy--corybantic and astringent. She was afraid, though the hard set of her lips would not have him know it. He sensed it, however, in the percussive waves that radiated from her. His Force sensitive Knights sensed it, too.

It was with a bitter sort of certainty that he began to entertain the imminence of Rey’s death.

He approached her and almost laid a hand at her shoulder. It hovered a moment, out of her sight, before he lowered it to his side. “You will pick your Knight, Rey.”

She nodded sharply, those eyes still darting from one Knight to the next.

“Then, you will fight. Whomever lives will then fill that vacant place in line. Do you understand?”

He heard her heartbeat. He smelled the acrid scent of her sweat. And most of all, he felt her utter fatigue as if it were his own. He wanted to turn her to him and shake her shoulders. He wanted to look at her without his mask and speak to her without the filter of his modulator. _You are about to die, you foolish girl! Do you not understand this?_

As if answering his unspoken thoughts rather than his words, she said: “I understand.”

She gripped her weighted staff in two hands and approached the line of Knights. She walked from one end of the line to the other, slowly. Keenly. Most of the Knights were taller than her, some near the same height. They all outweighed her, weeks of proper nourishment notwithstanding. And they were all fresh, whereas she had trained like a fool with a deathwish until just a few moments prior.

She made another slow pass and paused before the largest of the Knights, the only taller still than Kylo himself, and he thought he felt his heart stop. _No. Surely not._

Rey roughly prodded Esenn Ren in the shoulder with her staff, then took her place on the mat. The enormous Knight stepped from his place in line, his hand reaching for the wicked black blade slung across his back. _I should stop this,_ Kylo thought as Esenn rolled out his neck opposite her. _I have the power to stop this._

But as Rey raised her weapon and the Knight opposite her did the same, he felt as if he were being held back from this insane notion by an invisible hand.

He could only watch the subtle shifting of Rey's weight, and then her opening attack.

_She will die,_ he found himself thinking again. She was brazen and fought as if he'd not been ruthlessly training her for weeks. She did not use her opponent's size against him; she did not guard her middle. She did not do anything he'd taught her to do, acting in stupid, naïve terror instead. So when that black, painfully dull blade swung with sickening force down at Rey, Kylo was not at all surprised to hear it thunk dully into Rey’s side. Esenn did not keep his blade sharp--with his strength, he didn’t need to, and a dull blade ensured that his enemies would feel the most pain when he landed a blow--and even so, it sank several inches into her unguarded side. The only thing that had likely stopped it from cleaving her in two was the grotesque armor of her ribcage.

Rey made a sound he could live his whole life without hearing again, like a gurgled wheeze, and swung with surprising nimbleness from Esenn. Blood spattered across the mat as she did, sounding like the gentle, gruesome fall of rain in the too-quiet room. She panted, uneven, and Kylo wondered if the blow had knicked her lung.

He watched her steadily, determined to _see_ her as she died. Something hard and perverse wanted to watch the light in her eyes burn until the moment it was snuffed. He did not want her to die, but he also did not want to miss her death’s arrival. Her eyes darted to his mask for the barest of moments, and he felt the air siphon painfully from his chest, as if she were filling her ruined lung with the air from his. The room’s temperature seemed to drop, and, suddenly, she _drew._ She _absorbed._ The floor seemed to drop from beneath his feet as the axis of the galaxy shifted. Rey ground her clenched fist into the gore at her side and let out a primal, vicious snarl as she gathered the Dark lingering in the depths of each Knight of Ren.

It was over in a matter of seconds.

She charged at the Knight and Kylo watched in numb amazement as she swung her staff, not at his neck or at his side, but at Esenn’s weapon wielding hand. There was the recognizable crunch of bone, and her hand shot out to catch the dropped weapon. She whirled, flinging away the blade and using the staff to knock the Knight’s feet from beneath him. Another crack of bone as his ankle snapped, and Rey straddled the waist of the fallen warrior and brought down her staff in an exact imitation of Kylo’s first cruel, painful lesson to her on these mats. Kylo had been wielding a saber, meant for this stabbing motion, but Rey persisted nonetheless, driving the blunt end of her staff into Esenn’s neck. It was ugly, though it was mercifully quick. The Knight twitched only once under her, a spray of dark red blood marking Rey’s neck: a morbid imitation of her own death blow to Esenn.

Her painfully uneven breathing continued as she stared down at the dead thing beneath her, and Kylo Ren felt his stomach churn.

Rey was not dead. It was not Rey that lay bleeding on the floor. She was to be a part of this thing he had helped to create, and she had earned her place more brilliantly, more violently, than any of the other fighters in this room. Never had a Placing Match taken so little time, and never after so grave an injury to its victor.

Rey did not stand up, her body looking impossibly small as it bent over Esenn. Her blood dripped onto the body in a stream that would soon prove dangerous. But there was a ceremony to complete before she saw the inside of a med bay. He gave her one more moment to gaze down at what she’d done before he spoke.

“Take his helmet.”

He expected her to glance up at him, appalled. He expected her to recoil, to do anything that would reveal her true purpose here, her true mission. The girl called Rey could not be as fallen as he.

But she tugged the helmet from Esenn’s head, revealing the blue skin of the Chiss to Kylo for the first time in years. He’d aged significantly since Kylo had last seen his face, and there was utter pain written in the fine creases around his wide open eyes. His head was limp on his gored neck, and it thumped against the mat when Rey awkwardly pulled off the helmet. She stood and turned to Kylo, not waiting for his next command.

She fitted the mask on her own head and knelt to retrieve her staff. In a few short, purposeful strides, she placed herself in that gap left by the being she had just slaughtered.

As if this thing that she’d done was nothing to her.

Kylo Ren was grateful for his own mask in that moment. He knew not much could be hidden from his Knights, but at least he could save them the tormented look on his face. He had not wanted Rey’s death, but he thought that he might have wanted this even less.

An absurd thought occurred to him, and he wondered if she would sing in his bath tonight. If she had soul enough left to create something beautiful like those sad, damp melodies.

He approached her, stepping over Essen’s still bleeding body. He regarded her, taking slow measure of her from her feet to her newly acquired mask. It was long, and more beaten than even his. Two stripes of heavily chipped red paint streaked down from the glass visor.

“Welcome to the Knights of Ren.” There was a buzzing in the air as the other Knights exuded their own acceptance of her into their ranks.

“Welcome,” he said, nodding his head in slow admiration. “Kata Ren.”

He looked into that hard won mask.

Kylo would give anything to see her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment to tell me your thoughts! Your reviews and feedback are my moon and stars, and I appreciate each and every one of you. I promise to work to bring you more chapters and in a more timely manner. :3


	6. Kata

There was a pool of blood gathering at the newest Knight’s left ankle, and her black clothes shone wetly. She might have been the most expedient inductee into the Knights of Ren, but if she continued to bleed like that, she would also hold the record for shortest tenure. The girl didn’t quaver, however, standing shoulder to shoulder with her new fellows in arms, content to bleed to death until she was told to do otherwise.

“Kata,” Kylo barked, and her head turned toward him. There was a strange sensation in his middle at her answering so quickly to this new name. He’d not left Ben Solo behind so easily.

She swayed a bit on her feet and a mix of horror and relief swept through him. She was still the stumbling girl in the snow that he’d first felt compelled to possess; she wasn’t lost entirely to the Dark. By the same token, however, if her grip on the Dark was waning, then she would likely soon lose her strength wholly. He jerked his head for her to follow him, and she obliged, leaving the line of Knights behind as they made for the exit.

She got through the door with her shoulders back and the chin of her helmet held high from her chest. As soon as the room and those within it faded from sight, she collapsed. Kylo was quick to catch her, but said nothing. They’d made this trek before, trailing sweat and blood. There was no need to think this any different, though he hadn’t needed to carry her since that first bout. And she hadn’t been gushing blood from a wound the size of his fist.

His pace was brisk, near a sprint, and Rey--no, Kata--curled into him as he rounded the corner to the med bay. Her long, narrow hand reached for him, and she found the lip of his high collar. He sucked in a breath, audible enough to be picked up by his damned enhanced modulator, as skin met skin. He only had a moment to register that her fingers were cold and clammy against the hot skin of his neck before the medic took the girl from his arms.

They began cutting her clothes from her body and Kylo felt oddly impatient to get the helmet off of her. She’d been wearing it for less than ten minutes, but that was too long. He didn’t know how to read her without her mottled eyes staring back at him. _This was a mistake_ , he thought as he reached for the release mechanism.

 _This was a mistake,_ he thought again as those eyes came into view, wide and unfocused in pain.

He shook his head, the emotion, the _compassion_ threatening to cloud his judgement. No. This was--

She groaned and Kylo only had a moment to look away as her breast band fell from her body, her entire left side smeared with blood. “Get her in a bacta tank!” he said as he tried to focus his mind on anything else.

There was a loud shuffling behind him, and orders were barked by others in the bay to get her stable before she drained every fucking drop of blood from her body. Kylo felt irritated, agitated. He felt the need to destroy something, to desecrate the corpse of the thing that had hurt her this deeply. Sound seemed to grow distant and muffled, and he turned to see them lowering Rey into a murky tank. Her back was to him-- _so much blood--_ and he caught a flash of the cleft of her buttocks before turning away again.

A medic bustled in, arms loaded with gauze and glinting medical equipment, and Kylo gripped the spindly youth by the collar. The equipment fell from her arms and Kylo cursed this further delay in healing Rey-- _Kata._ “You send word the moment she is stable. If she dies, all of you are relieved of your post.”

The girl nodded and Kylo shook her. “Repeat that back to me!”

She wet her lips, her voice shaking. “I will send word as soon as she is stable, Lord Ren. If she dies--w-we…”

“You won’t find work in this sector.”

The girl nodded again and Kylo released her, watching for a moment as she dropped to her knees and began picking up her spilled supplies. He made it a foot from the threshold before he ignited his lightsaber, cutting a smoldering line down the metal wall of the hallway.

* * *

 

Not much remained of the training arena when Kylo heard the soft footsteps behind him. The Knights had moved on by the time their master had returned, taking the body of Esenn with them. It was all the better; Kylo Ren was not beyond corpse desecration at this point.

He’d lost control, and he felt the tug of the Supreme Leader at the back of his mind. Snoke didn’t necessarily discourage his berserker fugues, but he would not approve of this particular rage’s cause. He tried to force this nagging sensation away. He did not want to name this upset just yet, and certainly not in front of his master.

He turned, finding the small medic with her hands clenched in the hem of her uniform shirt. He leveled the saber at her, the red light reflecting off her dark skin. “Do you still have a job?”

“Y-yes,” she answered quickly. “She--the patient is stable. She is awake, if you’d--”

“Dismissed,” Kylo said, turning back to the still smoldering weapons rack.

Stable. Awake.

For some reason, he felt the urge to wreak more havoc at the confirmation of her health. If she’d died, at least he’d be free of this--attachment. But she wasn’t dead. She was stable and awake and a member of the Knights of Ren. He glanced up at the arena’s now shattered mirrored wall, seeing his masked-self reflected back in a thousand pieces.

He extinguished his weapon and swept from the room. The medic was still standing there and he moved past her, a small twinge of pride at the look of horror on her face as she took in the destruction of the training room.

Kata was situated on a cot in the large main theatre of the bay. He’d expected her to be quartered off in a private room for overnight observation, but as she turned toward him, eyes clear and skin no longer sallow, he saw that this was not needed. She looked...healthy. Nothing like one who’d lost a quart of blood and cracked more than a few ribs in the exchange. Were her entire torso not tightly bound in gauze, Kylo would be none the wiser.

“You look well,” he said before he could think better of it. She observed him silently, that wide mouth a flat line.

“You scared the medics. They went overboard on the--” she waved her hand in the direction of the beeping equipment. “I had to talk them down from durasteel rib replacements.”

“They did what I demanded of them.”

Kata looked up at him, her gaze as hard as the alloyed ribs she had refused. “Take off your mask,” she said.

“No,” he answered quickly, dismissively.

She glanced into the lab beyond the door. “Everyone who is not a droid is drinking this shift off in the mess.” She looked back up at him, toying with a strip of gauze at her middle. “Take it off.”

He looked to her for another long moment before glancing into the lab where, indeed, only a droid stood watch, and then behind him to the hallway beyond. He turned back and released the hissing mechanism of his mask, reaching over her to set his next to where hers sat on the small side table. Then he turned his gaze to her, not leaning away from her.

He was close enough to not only hear her little gasp, but feel her stealing a sharp breath of the air they shared. After the events of the day, he found himself tempted to chase after that breath, to find a brief respite beyond her lips. He narrowed his gaze instead.

“I am your master now, Kata Ren, first in action, and now in title. I made you; I named you.” He slapped her hand from fussing with her gauze, his gloved thumb brushing against her taut stomach. His body was never as strong as his mind, and his hand augmented this bare touch, settling firm and heavy at her bound waist. “Know that you cannot make demands of me, only I of you.”

Color rose in her face, and his hand flexed on her. Her freckles darkened with her blush, as did her top lip. He swallowed, his eyes hard on that flushed bit of skin.

Her lips weren’t chapped any longer.

“And still you took the mask off for me.”

He was too focused on her mouth forming these words to actually hear them, taking a moment, then two, to understand her.

He leaned away, removing his hand, and he saw hers chase after momentarily. As if to grasp him and keep his touch settled at her middle.

Then her eyes flashed to the door, and she reached for his mask at her bedside. He took it from her, donning it as he turned to see the shift’s lead doctor reenter the room.

“Lord Ren,” she said, obviously startled. Her gaze dropped to the floor. “I was just checking Rey’s vitals--”

“--in the mess?” he finished for her.

He felt her chest constrict at the admonishment, tasted her embarrassment and fear. Good.

“It’s Kata Ren,” he snapped. “Change her records accordingly. I assume she is free to leave?”

The doctor had barely nodded before Kylo was turning back to Kata and handing her her folded clothes from the foot of her bed and walking to retrieve her newly won helmet. She pulled on her shirt stiffly, her wounds evidently still bothering her. He returned her helmet and she pushed it onto her head with that same adroitness from just after the Placing. He didn’t like how simple she made that seem. He stalked from the room, assuming she would follow after.

She did, though she went to her own chambers when they entered the shared antechamber.

 _Of course she did,_ he thought as he swiped open his own door. _Where else would she go?_

He took his mask off again, retreating to the ‘fresher and to an actual shower to wash this day from his skin. He scrubbed himself till his skin was pink and raw, and then again, until he stung all over.

But he couldn’t rinse away the stink of Rey’s blood. Kata. _Kata, Kata, Kata._ He couldn’t scrub out the vision of her top lip, darkening with her blush as he cupped her waist, made to seem all the smaller by his large hand.

It was time to admit that he wanted her. She was easy to want, all hard lines and raw strength. That sort of shell invited one’s curiosity over what parts of her were soft. Where exactly she yielded and how that felt. From the training mats, he knew what her pain sounded like. It was only natural that he would eventually want to also learn how her pleasure sounded. Compare how similar the sounds were. Wanting to fuck her was simple enough, and recognizing this meant he could now move forward with _not fucking her._

She was there when he stepped out of the ‘fresher, stopping him short. He had never been this undressed in front of her before. Just a sleeveless tunic and loose pants.

She clutched a change of clothes to her chest, a wad of gauze, and he could not help gaping at her. She was going to soak in his tub as if this were an ordinary day. As if she hadn’t almost bled out standing in a line with the scourge of the galaxy.

He pinched her chin, something he hadn’t done in weeks.

“Will you sing?”

_Why ask that?_

“Do you want me to sing?” she asked, not pulling from his grip.

_No._

“Yes.”

He didn’t know what was more difficult, looking into her hard eyes or watching her lip darken as blood rushed to her face.

“Then I’ll sing.”

He could kiss her. He held her chin; her lips were parted. He could jerk her up to him and slip easily into that wide mouth. He could be her air, even for a moment. He could. It would be easy as taking a step. Fitting his mouth over hers and touching something soft for the first time in a decade.

He heard again the dull thud of the blade that had struck her, felt again the panic he’d given into when he thought her good as dead. Taking that step would do nothing good. It would lace yet another thread of this girl under his skin, like stitches holding a wound closed, when he was much more content to bleed.

He released her.

She sang the song from her first night in his tub, and he didn’t pretend to look through the day’s intelligence on his holopad. He simply sat, hands grasping the arms of his chair, and listened. He stared at the crack in the door, the small slice of light that he refused to walk towards and listened.

He didn’t stand when she walked from the refresher. This would be the same, too, and if he stayed seated and did nothing different, eventually she would walk back to her own rooms and Kylo could take his first deep breath since before she tapped Esenn Ren on the shoulder.

But she didn’t stop, standing there and daring him to say or do something. She didn’t look at him at all.

She simply walked into his bedroom and climbed into his bed.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked as he followed after her. She had climbed under the blankets by the time he reached her, curling her body into that little ball he’d thought of a hundred times since she’d come to be a part of his daily life. He ripped the blankets from her on a snarl.

His voice was booming in the dim room. “What are you doing, Kata Ren?”

She turned on him, eyes flashing, “What do you want for me, Kylo? I’m doing what you want!”

He shook his head, flinging the blankets across the room. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

She laughed, but there was no humor. She didn’t even smile, he realized. Her smile was still something he’d never seen.

“Bullshit,” she spat. She got up on her knees then. He saw that her wet hair had left a dark spot on his pillow. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve seen how you look at me.”

Heat bloomed over the back of his neck, over the shells of his ears. Kylo climbed onto the bed as well, towering over her even on his knees. Crowding her. “So, what? You climb into my bed like some sort of archaic sacrifice?”

She said nothing for a long time, her gaze solidifying to stone.

His lips twitched, and his fingers flexed. He was angry, furious--but still he itched to lay his hands on her.

“Get out.” His voice was low, graveled and precise. As much a weapon as anything he’d wielded in his hands.

She made a clumsy lunge for him, her thin lips smearing over his chin, her teeth scraping him, and he tackled her. He gripped her wrists, holding them pinned above her head. She felt deceptively frail in his large hands, thin and hot like threads of freshly blown glass. He let his weight settle into her and waited for her fear.

But her legs fell apart instead, and he found himself cradled in the unbearable, startling heat between her thighs.

Kylo was hard--of course he was. He had been since the word “want” had fallen so easily from her lips. And she was there, hot and damp even through his clothes and hers. As if she hadn’t dried herself completely after her bath. Pinned beneath him. Open. His chin was still wet from where she’d swiped her mouth across him.

He leaned lower, giving her more of his heft. Her breath fanned across his face as he pressed more of her air from her. Then he rolled his hips. His pants were thin, the same as hers, and he made imprecise contact with her. Hard and prodding. She wouldn’t know the exact shape of him, the size, but she would feel that he was stiff. That he was _there._ He pushed again, his teeth bared, then he saw it.

Her breath hitched, her eyes wide, and Kylo thought, before he could think better of it, before he could banish that pathetic hope, _Maybe she wants this too_. His throat tightened at that little gasp and he wet his lips. But she hesitated, only a moment, only a heartbeat, before the whispy moan trickled from her.

That hesitation was enough.

Suddenly Ren was standing again in his wrecked main room, with her hanging in chains before him, half-dressed and wild. A look in her eye like she would do anything she had to do to survive. She would withstand anything to complete her mission.

Her mission.

He had almost forgotten to not trust her after these long weeks of pure honesty on the training mats. He’d grown complacent in an endless cycle of stilted breakfasts and pulverized knucklebones and pretty girls taking pretty baths in his rooms. Just as she had likely hoped he would.

She shifted beneath him, as if trying to find a bit of friction where they were gracelessly pressed together, and he cursed as he rolled off of her, brought achingly back to the present. He faced away from her, rubbing his cheek aimlessly against the damp left from her hair on his pillow.

His bed had never been safe. Snoke followed Kylo there when he had still been just a child, even if only in his mind. Whispering the words that would shape his dreams first, his bloody actions later. The intimacies of his body and the pleasure to be had by it was inexorably tied to the words and wants of his master.

He was a fool to think he’d find anything less than a battlefield when the scavenger lay with him on his mattress.

He felt her get up, but was absently surprised when her weight returned to the bed, accompanied by the rustling of fabric. She’d retrieved the blankets from the floor. A small nudge against his spine, and he reached behind him to grab a handful of sheets and pull them over himself as well. She was sleeping here, then.

He didn’t much care.

He lay there in the dark, staring at his wall and pressing his face into the place on his pillow that smelled like her freshly washed hair. He almost didn’t hear her when she spoke.

“I almost died today,” she whispered, her voice thin and brittle. She sounded vulnerable, afraid for the first time in his memory. Kylo remembered that fear. He knew well the choking panic that came when you realized that the Dark only went so far in preserving you. You lose your grasp on it, and it will let you fall. It will leave you for dead. So you take a little more each time, so that maybe you won’t be so bereft when you unclench your fist.

“You did,” he agreed.

She shifted behind him. Her fingers brushed the back of his neck before retreating.

“I’ve--I’ve never been that afraid in my whole life.” There was a damp edge to her words. Like tears.

He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the same painful pricks in the corners of his eyes. Willing himself to remain quiet, and failing.

“I’ve never been so afraid, either. I thought you would die in my arms.”

He felt her nod rather than seeing it. “I--I know. It...helped. No one has ever cared whether I lived or died before. And you,” she swallowed, her breaths almost gasping from her. “You care. A whole lot.”

 _Deny it,_ she seemed to say. _Deny **me.**_

He rubbed his tears into the already wet pillowcase. _Damn her._

“Yes,” he mumbled into the pillow beneath him. “Yes, I do.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know! An update in about a week! Fingers crossed I can keep this up, though I do have the next chapter pretty well planned out! Please oh please take a moment to tell me your thoughts on this. This chapter was a HOOT to write (not) and I would love to hear what you think. :)


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